Heathens
by Meresger
Summary: Companion piece to the final chapters of "The Outstanding Balance of Morality" that focuses on Neal/Baelfire and Merlin and their quest to free the Lost Souls of Tartarus. [Neal/Merlin (non-romance), implied Swanfire and Merlin/Nimue] (rated M for language)
1. Abandon All Hope

Title: Heathens

Disclaimer: I don't own _Once Upon A Time_. If I did, Adam  & Eddy would be fired and picking up litter by the side of the highway.

Summary: Companion piece to the final chapters of "The Outstanding Balance of Morality" that focuses on Neal/Baelfire and Merlin and their quest to free the Lost Souls of Tartarus. [Neal/Merlin (non-romance), implied Swanfire and Merlin/Nimue] (rated M for language)

Genre: Adventure/Bromance, Supernatural/Horror

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 **Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

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 **Note: This story's present takes place concurrently with the battle against The Sorcerer's Apprentice in Storybrooke in "The Outstanding Balance of Morality".**

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HEATHENS

"[Tartarus is] as far beneath Hades as heaven is high above the earth."

\- Zeus in _The Iliad_ (c. 700 BC)

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CHAPTER ONE

ABANDON ALL HOPE

(a not so long time ago)

The young children of The Underworld gathered around as their guardian sat in her uncomfortable metal crossing guard chair and opened a book. The woman, Milah, had come here long before they had and long before there were even metal chairs and crossing guards or things called "playgrounds" that for some were new experiences and for others had become common place in the town of Storybrooke where their childhood's had been put on hold for twenty-eight years before magical catastrophes or just ordinary accidents tragically ended their otherwise short lives.

Looking after the children who had no one to watch over them had been Milah's assigned task after she was murdered three centuries ago and found herself here. While she had been furious at first over Hades' punishment, she had felt enough guilt not to try and find a way out of it or fall into a deep denial that it even was punishment like some had. She had visited Killian's brother at his bar several times over the years, for instance, but even after even more time here than she had, Liam still seemed rather happy owning his bar and having liaisons with various women - and men.

It had never seemed to sink in with that pompous bastard that he was running a bar because knowing their father's predisposition toward drink and knowing that Killian had both the looks and ambition to otherwise outshine him, he had systematically turned his little brother into an alcoholic and further introduced him to a certain sort of woman as soon as he was old enough to get it up. Killian had thus became a drunk plagued with syphilis that diminished his mental capacity - and probably enhanced whatever psychopathy he might have shared with Liam as an unfortunate hereditary flaw.

Yes, Milah knew she had taken advantage of both and gotten Killian to believe he was rescuing her and then in love with her enough to obsess over revenge for three hundred years. In the beginning, it had felt like some small vindication that her lover, however much she had been using him, would set aside even his hatred of the man who killed his brother to seek revenge on her husband for her death.

But that was long ago. The years had passed, tethered to these children who had far more tragic stories than she did. Who reminded her of her son. A few had come and gone who'd met Baelfire, who informed her of his being trapped in Neverland, being actually handed over to Pan by Killian out of _spite_ for his having withheld his relationship with Milah - and the manner of her death. Yes, Killian was not a good man, but she hadn't considered he would betray her son - _as she had_.

It was that horrible woman Cora who'd informed her that Neal had left Neverland some time ago and was now grown with a son of his own, though Milah had suspected he'd left some time ago when children who came here stopped mentioning him. It was Rufio, one of Killian's victims and a friend of Baelfire's who'd told her that her son had a plan to escape, and that poor boy had sacrificed himself in a dual with the pirate to distract both Killian and Pan.

Milah wasn't clear on the specifics, though she had learned that Pan was actually Baelfire's grandfather and even after being murdered by his own son, that little shit had bragged about what he'd done to her son and almost succeeded in doing to Baelfire's boy. He'd even found it amusing to brag that he'd put certain ideas in Killian's head to encourage his interest in perusing her grandson's mother, the woman her son apparently still loved, that being a pirate, Killian, of course, had no honor in leaving alone.

One more way she'd failed her boy.

Milah had never wanted to cause her son pain. She'd just wanted to escape the life she'd been born into and had tried to fit into even though it was always too small and stiffing for her. In truth, she never should have had children. She didn't dislike them, but she was not a maternal person by nature, and it seemed that all bringing a child into the world had done was give him a life of suffering. She had called her husband a coward for the majority of their marriage and thereafter, but she had been a coward first for marrying him when her parents had that matchmaker set them up. She should have just left town, found the life of adventure she'd wanted since she was a small girl, but instead she'd ended up ruining lives by trying to do and be what was expected for happiness even though her heart had always known it would not bring _her_ happiness.

The chance of ever finding that now seemed unlikely to Milah. She had done enough horrible things in her time as a pirate that on top of abandoning her son in the middle of a war and child-killing genocide that even she managed to make it to Elysium with her son's eventual forgiveness, it would be in some servant role, not much different than the life she'd fled for being so dull and stiffing. Of course, she wasn't that brash, reckless, and selfish woman anymore. Her punishment here wasn't glamorous or adventurous. It was the task those qualities had kept her from with her own child, an obvious intended irony, for though Hades was not a kind or compassionate god, he was observant and insightful, and he did not punish without some intended lesson like the demons of Tartarus... at least generally speaking. There was always collateral damage when he was having a tiff with his older brother, and this recent "replica" of some cursed town in another realm was apparently related to that. If one good thing ever came of that family feud, it was the shifting of facades that resembled some real place a reflection in a cracked mirror. And, really, anything was better than _Oz_.

There were quite few souls here, who'd been killed while cursed into flying apes by a witch from Oz, including some children like the girl in the back row with black pigtails who seemed far too small to be of any use as a monster, which was apparently why the witch had killed her instead of just turning her back when she got bitten.

Milah had accepted her own happy ending was forfeit, but the children, they had a chance to escape this place to a better one where families would take them in, perhaps even be granted a boon from the gods to grow up in a fashion, find love, foster children themselves. It was not a perfect system, of course, and she had long heard whispers that it was all really just a false construct by Zeus that trapped them for his entertainment, kept their souls from whatever Afterlife or rebirth truly came after death. But she was no philosopher. Her duty was simply to give these children hope, to help them deal with the traumas that often surrounded their deaths. Children were more perceptive than adults gave them credit for, more than Milah ever had in life, which only increased her guilt as it became clear Baelfire had been well aware how she'd neglected him for men at the local tavern - only to be told by his father that she'd been raped and murdered by the pirate she was seducing. A child should not have to know or believe such things.

But life was not fair or censored, and these children with their sad, frightened faces, clutching tattered and broken replicas of items that once brought them comfort reminded Milah that even if children didn't deserve to suffer so in life or death, they were also stronger than adults believed. Even if guilt and regret lingered, they found hope again more easily, often in something as simple as a story. And so Milah looked at little Anthony clutching his mutilated stuffed bear and little Dolores with her burned blanket and all of the rest and knew she had the power to restore that hope for them so they could leave this place and the tragic ending of their lives behind.

Opening the thick cover of the book in her lap, Milah began, "'Once upon a time, there were three primordial deities: Chaos, everything that was before, Tartarus, from which the Light and the Cosmos were born, and Gaia, who brought forth Life. From this Life and Light were born gods who wanted order and monsters who wanted destruction and disorder. They fought many battles until the gods were victorious.'"

The children sat in rapt attention as Milah turned the page.

'"'From their victory they the gods fashioned three realms of their own for mortals,'" she explained, "'beyond the ones created by the ancients. There was Elysium, for those with purified souls whose lives were lived doing acts of charity. And there was Tartarus, named such for it was a prison for those who seek to snuff out the Light, a constant reminder of that which they can never destroy but also never again feel. It is a truly horrible place!'

"'And then," said Milah as she flipped another page, "there is The Underworld, where those with unfinished business reside, awaiting either bliss or torment... or attempting to hide from it. Ruled by Hades, brother of Zeus, it is a fractured image of worlds mortals once knew, fractured just as their souls have been by pain and loss, but selfishness and misdeeds. It is a place that welcomes both those who have been harmed and those who have caused it, and so there are always dangers in The Underworld. But in those dangers the ones who have suffered can find their strength, their justice, and the ones who were selfish and cruel can find redemption and mercy. And so it is a dark place, but not one without hope. For though many monsters were unleashed into the world by Pandora, hope did not flee this place.'"

She paused to take a breath and Dolores raised a hand and asked, "Is there hope in Tartarus?"

Milah set the book down before answering. "Tartarus is a place for the worst souls who cannot be redeemed, who defied the gods or laws of magic and committed horrible atrocities. Hope... the only hope in that place one must bring with them."

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(present day)

In his left hand Merlin held a torch that glowed blue as Hades' hair while his right gripped the rear rudder of the small gondola.

At the front of the boat, Neal stood with gloved hands stretched out to touch the gate that sank beneath the neon green water and the clearest voice he could muster began the incantation etched into the metal in ancient, seemingly indecipherable ruins:

"Through me the way to the city of desolation,  
Through me the way to the eternal pain,  
Through me the way through the lost creation.  
My maker was divine authority  
Wrought me: the power, and the unsearchably  
High wisdom, and the primal love supernal.  
Nothing ere I was made was made to be  
That deathless as themselves I do not die.  
Justice divine has weighed: the doom is clear.  
All hope renounce, ye lost, who enter here."

Slowly the gates to Charon's Cave creaked open and the small gondola eased forward, pulled by an unnatural current into the darkness that swirled with poisonous fog so thick it nearly choked even the glow from beneath. With the darkness came screams that echoed through the cavern, off the barely visible jagged rocks that would shred any vessel not meant to traverse this route.

As both men sunk to sit inside the boat another scream, louder than the last, made Neal shudder and remember that this was route by which Zeus sent Ixion of Lapiths on a spinning wheel of fire for crimes against the gods. Apparently, the rumor was true that magic had absorbed his screams and replayed them endlessly. Neal wanted to believe it was also true that Orpheus had succeeded in using it _and returning through it_ to rescued his wife Eurydice. Of course, that was the cave when it still existed as a portal to _The Underworld_ , not since it was relocated as a portal to _Tartarus_. Obviously anyone could find a portal to the former and get out. Tartarus? Not so much.

The Underworld was full of reluctantly repentant and pitiable sinners who might yet be saved but Tartarus was the land of the damned with those who failed to cleanse themselves and so were sentenced to join those who'd shown such inhumane malevolence in life that their trials were immediate and their transfer and sentence from the Halls of Justice sometimes carried out by Zeus himself. Like Ixion.

A muffled roaring sound approached and Neal sunk into the boat, instinctively holding his breath against the toxic vapors even though he was dead. The last of the water's green glow through the mist faded, the magical properties of the river changing just before his stomach bottomed out. Merlin had let go of the torch and it fell eerily beside the boat, gravity even in Hell pulling them down at the same rate.

The fall seemed to take forever. It probably was not nine days as in the "myth", but it was long enough that Neal began to wonder if it would ever end. Which was exactly when they smacked into the water bellow. To say it hurt was an understatement. Being whacked by the damn ore didn't help either.

When Neal broke the surface with a gasping breath - yes, he was dead, but you could worse than die in Tartarus - the darkness had been replaced with blinding light and water was simply gone. Both he and Merlin were laying on an immense salt flat along with the overturned boat.

"Welcome to Hell," Neal sighed.

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AN: Neal's incantation is from the gate to Hell in _Inferno_ , the first part of _The Divine Comedy_ by Dante.


	2. Hell's Playground

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note: This story's present takes place concurrently with the battle against The Sorcerer's Apprentice in Storybrooke in "The Outstanding Balance of Morality".**

 **Note to Mir: I'm glad you're happy about the bromance adventure and that you liked Milah's opening. As much as I always hated her character, what they did to her in The Underworld for CS was unforgivable, imo. They hinted at her having had genuine character development/deep regret for her actions and while Liam was just boozing it up and trying to manipulate his brother, being the same douchebag he was in life, he got to "move on" while Milah, who was trying to do in death what she failed at in life not only got damned tragically while trying to help her ex-lover not simply because she "owed" Rumple anything, but because she clearly felt regret for using him, but Hook, who didn't KNOW she had used him didn't even seem to care which just makes him out to be an even bigger psychopath than he already seemed to be and ads to the tragedy of Milah's tale. Caught between Rumple and Hook, she was basically damned if she did and damned if she didn't. Whether she did the right thing or the wrong thing she got shafted and never got the closure she truly wanted, to apologize to Baelfire, which you have to figure he'd have wanted too, so Rumple and Hook (and Emma) screwed him over again too. As for** _The Divine Comedy_ **, I read it long ago in college and like** _The Iliad_ **I don't remember enough to quote anything without a Google search. While 'Carnivhell' focused on sins in a quasi** _Purgatorio_ **fashion, this story will probably just use some of the settings from** _Inferno_ **rather than going into any depth concerning the souls there and their punishments. Maybe I will put some thought into the difference between souls in The Underworld working to cleanse themselves of their sins and the ones in Tartarus who failed to do so; it's interesting that Lust and Gluttony are present in both Purgatory and Hell according to Dante, but the other sins/punishable offenses differ, though with some similarities. If you're curious, the stages/circles and some further thoughts are posted at the chapter's end.**

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CHAPTER TWO

HELL'S PLAYGROUND

"Welcome to Hell," Neal sighed and shivered, glad he'd opted to trade his toga for Enchanted Forest clothes, even if the drawstring pants were a bitch.

Though it looked as though it should be a hot, blazing desert, it was actually bitterly cold beneath the hazy green sky while a constant wind churned up an endless spray of stinging salt that was just wet enough to stick to your skin... or anything else in the wasteland.

They came across an enclave of rusting and salt covered ruins after a few miles of walking, a village or perhaps simply a mockup of one reminding of those old atomic bomb test videos. A half melted swing-set squeaked in the ever-present breeze and Neal carefully took a seat on the thing while Merlin leaned against the twisted jungle gym and dumped pebbles out of his boots.

Swings always made Neal think of Emma. And Henry. He'd gotten to take his son to the playground one day of the few he'd known him, wishing that Emma would have taken up his extended invitation to join them even though he'd known that she wouldn't.

He had so many regrets in his life, but those revolving around his true love and his son made the top of that list. His father, of course, was a close third. Neal knew that Merlin felt the same about Nimue. And that Nimue, in her own twisted way, felt the same about him. Neal had shared his father's body and mind, after all, enough to recognize some of the shades of the Dark Ones that were bound to his soul by the curse. Zoso was the loudest, being the most recent, but Nimue had been the most... omnipresent and least... _insane_ as if time had mellowed her even if her soul was trapped in some unenviable incorporeal state that simultaneously exited in The Vault, The Underworld, and the mind of whomever currently contained the curse.

Of course, now she existed only in Tartarus thanks to the actions of Anna, Hook, and Neal's father with Exalibur. That wasn't exactly any better a state to be in, Neal supposed. But at least it was a solitary punishment instead of a shared insanity. And he knew Merlin hoped that would be enough to resurrect some spark of his true love out of the ruins the curse had made of her soul. Guilt and regret had clearly eaten away at the man however charismatic he pretended to be around others. All of his attempts to destroy the parasite he unleashed on humanity had failed rather spectacularly, from his apprentice and Arthur to his desperate meddling with Emma as a child and inability to reach her common sense and compassion through Anna's desperation and lust being amplified by Nimue and her successors.

Nimue didn't deserve to be here any more than Milah did, of that Neal was certain. Neither had been perfect and had done questionable things in life, but at the start of it, Nimue had acted as a human would faced with injustice and mortality. It's not as if she'd known a demonic presence would use her soul to fully enter the world in a sentient state. Chaos had returned to take revenge for being defeated by Light and Life. The Original Darkness had outwitted the gods attempt to contain it. Perhaps if they had used Prometheus' spark, but the distrust and hatred between the gods and the Titans ran old and deep.

Old and deep enough that the gods rarely came here. If worse-came-to-worse, they might lighten the punishment of a Titan or Giant (not the nice vegan kind) to take care of a soul causing trouble. Even Charon had spent as little time here as necessary after being tricked by Sisyphus. Since then, it was rare for the ferryman to bring the damned beyond his cave. Instead, that task had been given to the infamous Davey Jones.

"You're certain Jones will show up?" Merlin broke the silence, drawing a frown from Neal his thoughts on just that subject. "He should have received your message by now. Perhaps he decided not to show."

"I don't think he can fail to answer the Lord of The Underworld, even if I'm not a god," Neal responded. "And he seemed... nice enough for a damned soul when I handed him over a new crew member shortly after I, ah, took office. Some of his crew are souls that got dumped down here without a trial, and he knows my mother's down here, so I gotta figure he'll have some sympathy. Just don't call him 'Davey'. He hates that," he recalled. "Not sure where he got the nickname, but I can relate to the whole not liking your name thing."

"There's nothing particularly wrong with 'Baelfire'," Merlin argued as he replaced his boots.

"It means 'fatal fire'. If names are supposed to have meaning, it sure as shit gave me a crap destiny," Neal shot back and Merlin shrugged.

"Yes, well, mine means 'hawk from the sea fortress' and I was born in a landlocked kingdom and never did turn into a hawk. Names have meaning. Unless they don't. It's all what we assign them by our human predispositions and superstitions... unless, of course, you get yourself cursed... but other than that, meaningless."

"So, you're saying I shouldn't be offended that Emma's parents who let me walk to my death and never fessed up to treating me like shit named their second born after me in a self-serving ceremony to show how heroic and good they are?"

"Oh, you should absolutely be offended," Merlin agreed. "I did meet them. Though I didn't have enough to truly decipher if they were that wholly selfish and in denial about it or just lacking in intelligence, it was hard to fathom that they trusted Arthur. Or that they left their child with that old woman in a diner in the forest for days. Or exactly how they reasoned those Middle Mists were a floral personification of the truest and most pure love even after discovering Nimue created them using her murder victim's blood and betrayed me and Arthur gave them regularly as a gift to boast to himself about raping Gueneviere for years. But then they did have their first spark of true love over a man murdered by Prince Charming, so there's clearly something a bit demented and off in that epic romance. Of course, there's something a bit demented and off about how the gods perceive romance and relationships, so depending when that Isaac fellow entered them into his book, I suppose it's not entirely their fault that their perceptions were somewhat less true and more truly unsettling.

"And that would then hold for their approach to you and your true love," Merlin continued, "a true love that was born in a world not bound by those warped rules, at least not then, and so would inherently be foreign and offensive to them. Your love was true, because you came from a world ruled by the gods and their rules, but it was also real because it formed outside of those rules. Magic made you meet, but not more than that. The foundation of your love is free will, not fate, and that's something they have never truly known, even if they didn't _know_ that they didn't know it. And so naturally they would fear that connection and prefer to side with some familiar trope, however distasteful."

Neal frowned. "You're saying I should forgive them for helping get me killed?"

"I'm saying you should understand that they lacked the capacity to fully understand the depth and importance of your love for Emma and hers for you," Merlin counseled. "I have had a great deal of time to ponder the particulars of love. I loved Nimue before the gods bound our world to theirs through the Grail... and the Dark One. That connection altered rules, altered people, made them less than they could be... a tragic irony when I thought that cup was a promise of knowledge and hope to bring a better future and potential for everyone. A cruel trick."

"Yet you're not the one trying to take them down," Neal mused. "Instead you're willing to bind yourself to them - for love."

"Because our love is older than the chains they used to shackle our souls," Merlin stated. "I have to believe that is enough to pull Nimue from this place. But I also accept that we are not innocent in the darkness we brought into our world and that Nimue is beyond charity... but not mercy. To play ferryman or reaper for the gods is a small price to give Nimue the chance to redeem herself. And myself. My arrogance and ignorance has cost our world a great deal. It might cost it everything if your family fails."

"Emma won't fail," Neal insisted. "And neither will we."

As he finished speaking the sand nearby began to ripple and heave, reminding of that horror movie about the giant sand worms. Thankfully, it was not a sand worm, but instead an old pirate ship erupted out of the salt flat and a figure came over to the starboard side bellowing, "Aye, what desperate damned soul awaits my brig to find passage back to eternal tor..."

Davy Jones trailed off and pulled his spyglass away with a grumbling, "Oh, it's _you_. Who's the poncy-looking fellow? Looks far too well-kept to be one of these heathens."

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AN: Exactly how that damn River of Lost Souls connects with Tartarus the way OUAT depicted it is seriously hard to figure out since they had what seemed to be goulish souls rising out of the water to try and pull both the living and dead into it. I decided it would be easier if those aren't souls trying to pull people in, but rather some kind of Tartarus sirens that infest the river where And while Hades made The Underworld above ground resemble Storybrooke, the water was still part of that river, just enchanted with a glamour to appear like normal water in the fractured facsimile of the town. Which doesn't mean Underbrooke had no water that wouldn't damn you, since The Underworld had more than one river, but Hades clearly chose to situate the most perilous so that Emma's family would, hopefully, get tossed in.

 **According to Dante:**

 **Stages of Purgatory: Stubbornness, Repent, Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony, Lust.**

 **Circles of Hell: Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Anger, Heresy, Violence, Fraud, Treachery.**

 **So they work in a logically reverse order that the worst sins in Purgatory are the least offenses in Hell. I suppose the lesser sins in Purgatory are more easily overcome while the worse sins in Hell get you a straight pass there and those offenders don't end up in Purgatory by his reasoning. Of course, that doesn't work for the show's canon. Cora, Liam, James, and Gaston ALL committed Fraud and Treachery on top of the most the other sins... though it could be argued that Hades ensured anyone connected to the "stories" that would help facilitate his escape had their trial "paperwork" misfiled so they got sent to The Underworld and stayed there far too long. If the Black Fairy has a realm where she can stand outside of time and see how best to manipulate or wait out events, then you'd expect the gods could do the same thing and Hades would have known he could set his escape in motion way back with helping Liam get that gem, possibly tweaking events here and there, maybe even (off screen) putting the time travel idea into Zelena's head to erase certain events AND knowing she would actually fail, that (Anna would take over Emma), and she and Hook would be the ones to go, amplifying Hook's infatuation with Emma by their past meeting and The Savior becoming a selfish bitch and thus leading to everyone going to The Underworld for Hook. Why not, right? HEADCANON ESTABLISHED!**


	3. Ferryman of the Damned

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note: This story's present takes place concurrently with the battle against The Sorcerer's Apprentice in Storybrooke in "The Outstanding Balance of Morality".**

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CHAPTER THREE

THE FERRYMAN OF THE DAMNED

"You can't blame me!" Neal complained, standing beside the eternally about forty with flecks of gray in his dark hair Captain "Don't Call Me Davy" Jones at the helm as the ship glided eerily through the dry lake bed.

Apparently, while Jones was willing to help them reach their destination, he had a bone to pick with Neal in that his initial delight at gaining a new crew member had soured considerably. But it could be worse. Even if the Captain of the _Flying Dutchman_ was not a congenial sort, at least he looked human rather than being some humanoid octopus.

"Can't I? If you hadn't been so heartsick over your bloody true love," Jones complained, turning the wheel, "Liam's pretty boy baby brother would be here and they could be plotting to toss each other overboard to a hydra or one of those liver-eating eagles. Instead, little Killian is off shagging the mother of your child and I'm quite certain Liam is attempting to turn my crew against me and throw me in a pit. My own flesh and blood! He'll never succeed, of course. Intelligence seems to be a quality that either didn't pass very far down my line or was rotted away by syphilis. But its becoming a nuisance!"

"Sorry. But you really can't blame me, man. _Everyone_ sent here is an asshole!" argued Neal. "And to be accurate, he's actually shagging my sort of sister-in-law Anna. Emma was merged with her Evil Twin who was in control."

"That so? Bloody nuisance that curse," snorted Jones. "Rather unusual for the good one to survive isn't it? Never herd of any merging into one before. I thought the evil ones tended to murder 'em in the womb with the life-draining magic or some such thing."

"Yeah, usually, but our friendly apocalypse-attempting sorcerer put a savior-making spell on Emma by ripping out her dark potential and putting it in some other kid when she was like the size of a grain of rice or something, before the curse reached life-draining stage. Maybe saved her life, but that other kid's sucked, so I it's not like a good guy approved counter-curse," Neal concluded.

"No, I imagine destroying a child's life before birth would at the very least give one a long and unpleasant stay in your domain. Of course, trying to destroy existence makes that crime rather moot."

"It was her parents idea actually, so he'd only get conspiracy on that one," Neal snorted and Jones snorted.

"Really now? And here I thought _my_ kin were even bigger arseholes than I. Speaking of... CABIN BOY! GET YOUR FAT ARSE UP HERE!"

Shortly, Liam Jones appeared and shot a death glare at Neal. Seems he was disliked by both Jones brothers. Neal wouldn't exactly to be _liked_ by either of them.

"Ah, Liam," Davy Jones grinned at the fairer haired man, "you remember Lord Baelfire who delivered you to me and sent your wee widdle Killypoo back to the land of the living."

"Sure, the man bound to a feckless job for loving my brother's whore," scoffed Liam.

"As it turns out," the Captain corrected, "that lovely lass' whose conviction you were trying to undermine with your colorful insults wasn't that savior at all, but a construct of evil from a blood curse upon the actual savior's family, so in all likely hood, one day soon widdle Killy will be murdered by his own offspring and join us here so you can have a good laugh that he believed your little speech and tell him all about how you made him into a drunk and pushed him into the bed of the most diseased prostitute in town, ensuring he'd never be able to best your ambitions for which you murdered so many or even have the simple happy family life of which you were both robbed at such a young age. And how woefully ironic that you bought into Hades' trick to steal the thing for which I was damned... and damned yourself to this wretched fate of realizing that the brother you tried so hard to undermine was far more skilled and inspiring of loyalty. And conning his way to redemption. You'd think if you were so bright, you'd have known better than to trust a god with a chip on his shoulder from being bullied by beloved and big brother. Or at least read your family history. I suppose ambition and being a sadistic little fuck blinded you."

"Is that all, _Captain_?" Liam sneered out.

"Yes, I suppose. Go swab the deck."

"I just did."

"I think you still fail to understand the concept of Hell, Jones. You're a despicable human being who had centuries to cleanse your soul, but spent that time instead peddling to dead alcoholics and shagging dead prostitutes to kill time until your baby brother finally arrived so you could see what he'd become and then tear down his self-worth, because you missed your little game. Well in this game, I'm the one making the rules, and you're the pathetic pillock who will never amount to anything."

Liam glared again before stomping off.

"Is baiting him wise?" asked Merlin, wandering over to join them.

"He cannot truly harm me," shrugged Jones. "My station is sanctioned by the gods _but I am dead_. And I may sail this vessel, but I'm not bound to it by my soul like Thanatos his sword. Sure, he could tie me up, but keelhauling me isn't going to result in my tragic demise and a new captain for this vessel. All it will do is infuriate Zeus. But my vengeful descendant hasn't been here long enough to learn the ropes, as it were, or perhaps simply has no interest in educating himself considering how he spent his time in The Underworld... not so different than how his brother spent his time in Neverland, apparently, passing around the bottle and bedding whores.

"I can only assume," he lamented, "that the gods decided to further punish me by ensuring my line degenerated from bold explorers who sough to expand the horizon of their world - certainly a redeeming quality to offset the general activities of piracy - to egotistical drunkards whose greatest aspiration was having men kiss their boots and women kiss their cocks."

"You tried to rob Hades," Merlin reminded. "Not particularly _wise_."

"I never claimed to be wise, wizard," Jones argued. "I was daring. I dared to do what the gods never expected. I stole the Eye of the Storm from Poseidon and used it to open a portal between my world and yours, worlds that they had deemed be locked in the states under which they were bound to Mt. Olympus. I brought my maritime knowledge to that feudal cesspool of a land - no offense - and, if in a small way that the gods ever more stifled over the centuries, allowed its people to become more than the gods would have allowed them to be. I forced them to alter their stories. A crime by their justice, naturally, pulling a Prometheus, but for humanity? For mortal beings? I gave them back a little bit, if for a moment, the free will to evolve, to expand their horizons."

"And then you tried to rob Hades," Neal repeated and Jones scowled.

"Yes, _and then_ I tried to rob Hades. No soul is perfect!"

"Speaking of souls," Neal returned to the original subject, "do you know where the Lost Souls are?"

"As I said, I can take you to the first place the river might have spat them out. But they have no set destination and it's unlikely any would have remained where they egresses. The wilderness is full of monsters, after all. As such, it'd be best to find an ally in one of them for what you seek if it cannot be found there."

"And the Dark Ones?" asked Merlin.

"About the same, I'd imagine," replied the Captain. "Bound to that curse for long as they were, it gave them an automatic return-to-sender, but as that magic is ancient, before Zeus began devising punishments for mortal souls, and the degree of culpability a tricky mess being seduced by a primordial dark sentience, they'd be nomads like others unless or until some gruesome ancient creature captures them for a chew toy. Not being formally sentenced to getting eviscerated by two headed birds or repeatedly drown by a Hydra doesn't mean you can't meet that fate. The monsters down here, they particularly like the challenge of capturing their own prey, which I suspect is why Hades would occasionally toss someone in. They grow bored of having dinner served up on a silver platter. Less chance they'll revolt if they have the thrill of the hunt," explained Jones as the ship reached the end of the lake bed where magma was spilling out onto the ground, the white replaced by a vast lava field.

"Where are we heading?" Merlin inquired.

"The Howling Plains are the closest," Jones answered. "Prison of the lustful who did worse than just covet their neighbor's wife. Seek out Helen. She knows all who arrive there and less often leave."

They had reached the lava flow, but it proved no impediment for the enchanted ship. The _Flying Dutchman_ cut through it like an ice breaker in a frozen sea, the black rock breaking open to reveal rather than glowing red magma, acid green water that splashed against the hull.

As they left the salt flats and transitioned into a sulfur-fumed wasteland Neal noticed that on the side of one of the volcanoes in the distance there was a small oasis, a hollow of trees and grass surrounding a crumbling castle.

Neal knew what it was, of course, and he imagined that Isaac looked out at them from one of the arrow-slit windows, trapped with his fellow rogue Authors in a horrible version of _Big Brother_ where no one got voted out. He couldn't say that he felt even pity for the man who'd conned his family for fame... and to escape he fate he'd probably come to realize awaited him. The Sorcerer's Apprentice was a fool. And more the fool who followed him.

Above the sky began to dim rapidly into a starless darkness, its green hue shifting into a rippling light-show like a malevolent aurora borealis.

"Best get bellow deck," Jones told them. "The weather forecast ahead is never for clear sailing."

* * *

AN:Technically, that makes Henry the biggest fool of all, right? ;-p. So, Davy Jones. I hated his character in the _Pirates_ movies, but an incarnation of him was an easy plot device, plus a way to see what misery Liam discovered after thinking he was moving on to Pirate Heaven. The castle I stuck the Authors in is meant to be like the place in _Inferno_ called "Limbo" where virtuous non-Christians and unbaptized pagans resided. Obviously, that wouldn't make sense in this story, so I put the unvirtuous of the Authors there. I imagine the gods would reward those who did their bidding to the letter and while they would punish those who strayed, some part of their bargain would prevent truly terrible punishment, so they're stuck in an inferior version of Elysium in the "First Circle" which seems like a sort of Hell version of Ante-Purgatory.


	4. Into the Badlands

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note: This story's present takes place concurrently with the battle against The Sorcerer's Apprentice in Storybrooke in "The Outstanding Balance of Morality".**

* * *

CHAPTER FOUR

INTO THE BADLANDS

"Moloch the heavy judger of men! Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war!"

"Another incantation?" Merlin inquired from his bunk across the narrow cabin.

"Not from our world. Or this one," Neal replied, missing intensely this drab existence in New York right then. If his father had given him one gift with all of the curses, it was literacy, and he'd fallen in love with many works from his adoptive home world that were now just lines in his head, just memories like people he'd loved.

"You're thinking of Emma."

"Are you ever not intrusively observant, man?" Neal groaned.

"Sorry. Nimue did used to get on me about that," Merlin apologized. "I tried to shake it, but being a tree for centuries, I suppose I regressed a bit into old habits."

"It's fine. You're right. A day's never passed that I haven't," he sighed, running a hand over his face. "Got many more thinking of her than being with her. The weight of it never lifted. Probably never will and assuming we're not obliterated into nonexistence shortly, I'll have an eternity of who knows what to keep on baring that weight on my soul. Or, you know, might still be nonexistence."

"I understand."

"I guess you do."

Merlin reminded, "But heavy as that weight feels, the last day you did spend with her, you both embraced your love, bared your souls, and even if you had only moment, it was true and that runs deeper than many get who live their whole lives in one anther's company. Emma will carry that with her in this battle and on through to the other side of it. And it will free your soul, to move beyond the reach of the gods, to be at peace until you are at least reunited, whole."

"You really believe that?" Neal asked, rolling onto his side, "that there is something beyond this? That the gods weren't just trapping us all in their immortal dreamcatcher before our souls got vaporized into star dust same as if this kook succeeds?"

"I believe that some things happen by a design older than the gods," Merlin answered. "I believe that love came before them and exists beyond them."

"I wanna believe that.. But every time we've gotten reunited we've been ripped apart. Just seems hard to believe the universe'd be that cruel and _then_ just be like 'here, you get to be together now forever in eternal bliss!'"

"Life is suffering."

"Now you're just quoting The Buddha."

"I feel a special bond with that acetic from the Land Without Magic."

"The tree thing?"

"Yes, the tree thi-"

The ship suddenly pitched to port and a howling sound echoed around the hull.

"Guess we've arrived."

It wasn't long before a glowering Liam Jones informed them that his ancestor requested their presence on deck. On the way they passed much of the crew who'd taken shelter from the ferocious winds above. Jones himself stood in the limited shelter provided by the deckside entrance to his quarters.

Hurricane force winds buffeted the ship, though magic kept the sails from becoming more tattered than they were and the ship itself from rocking terribly where it had weighed anchor in a narrow channel that cut through a vast and parched valley. The mountains they'd encountered at the edges of the salt flats were distant silhouettes, barley visible through the churning dust save what looked like a burgeoning eruption from one of the volcanoes there.

"This is where we part ways, gentlemen," Jones told them. "Geryon can take you further in."

* * *

The Howling Plains held true to their name. With the relentless wind came a continual howling sound, like pack of wolves baying over a kill. This was the final fate of the uncommonly and obsessively lustful, of adulterers, ambitious whores, individuals with truly deviant fetishes. and those who used sex and sexuality to seduce others to their whims either for personal gain or simply for the fun of it.

Neal considered that mother might have ended up here if she'd been sentenced, for while it didn't seem that lust was her primary reason for leaving her family, she had used it often to find temporary escapes from her marriage, used it to seduce those who could give her that escape.

There was no escape for those sentenced here, to the seemingly endless refugee-like camp of flimsy shelters being blown about by the vicious wind.

And his mother's sins did not mean she was here. The Styx wouldn't necessarily despite its accidental souls where their sins would have taken them, particularly when many here had committed a number of grievous sins. That's why it was up to the Justices - or Zeus - to determine which merited the eternal punishment, which torment would be the most effective. It was a place to start, however.

Neal gripped his scarf while Merlin held tightly the hood of his cloak and they ventured into the battered camp, seeking the one here who could offer information.

They found her in a tent indistinguishable from the rest, a woman who resembled more a starving Dust Bowl farmer's wife than the beautiful young royal who'd seduced two kingdoms into war.

Helen of Troy was also the first to cast a sleeping curse on another mortal - using a golden apple from Aphrodite. But the war thing was more serious, obviously, and for the fun she'd had using her beauty and guile she was now a withered woman trapped in this hellscape.

After introductions had been made, she cluttered a cup of tea in bony hands and told them, "We've only had one nomad come through here. An arrogant young man who attacked several of my people with his sword until his old mistress, a rather sadistic whore herself, stabbed him and pushed him back into the river. Seems he'd killed her to take the fall for his committing genocide, destroying the last of the good Giants to take their gold for his kingdom's coffers. The rake is rather lucky his brother pushed him in your realm before he went to trail," she said to Neal.

"Yeah, probably," he agreed. The gods had sentenced most of the Giants to Tartarus. The ones James killed were a small splinter group who wanted peace instead of war and had abstained from involving themselves in that long-ago battle. Even if they hadn't sided with Zeus, the gods had afforded them some respect for not fighting against them. Killing anyone respected by the gods did not generally end well and if Hades hadn't needed James to distract David, he'd have probably been tried quickly and long gone from The Underworld by the time his brother arrived.

Hades had complicated the fuck out of things. Dorothy's aunt shouldn't have been there long at all. Sure, she'd not had the most supportive of responses to finding out her niece was gay, apparently, but she'd used that phone to try and send her apologies to the young woman, to make peace with things. She should have been encouraged to move on. That was how it was _supposed_ to work. But instead the former Lord of The Underworld had lapsed in ensuring that certain souls who'd finished their business got ferried out of there and Zeus was just too arrogant and out-of-touch to realize that his little brother was plotting against him again.

And so here they were somehow enticed into cleaning up the gods' mess, because it wasn't like Zeus or Hera or any of them really cared that a few mortal souls got misplaced, not even the good ones that definitely did not deserve to be in the depths of hell.

Before they headed out, Helen tracked down "Jack", the once vivacious and vicious mistress of Prince James. She was still vicious, but like Helen had lost her beauty.

"Find him," Jacqueline hissed, "and stick him in the pit he deserves. I may be a thief and a whore who seduced and lied my way into the bed of a prince for my own gain, but I never betrayed anyone I pledged loyalty to, _gave my heart to_. That prick knew I was with child when he led me to my death. I know that I was neither the first, nor the last mistress he knocked up and then disposed of. I don't care if he has a blood curse to blame for being a murderous bastard. I want him to freeze. I want demons to shatter his balls and leave him a castrated little fuck lamenting all his failed conquests."

"We'll... ah... do our best, madam," Merlin assured.

As they walked back toward the river the wizard remarked, "Sounds like your father-in-law has quite the... colorful brother."

"He's not my father-in-law," Neal reminded. "But, yeah, my kid's family is kind of fucked up from all sides."

Once they reached the river, Neal took a small dagger from his belt and sliced his palm, letting a few drops fall into the water.

It didn't take very long for the water to boil and a beast to erupt from the surface, raining down droplets that sent the few sinners nearby running in terror.

Neal and Merlin, unlike the other dead, stood their ground and watched the mutated Giant flap massive dragon wings and land with surprising grace on the dusty ground.

"You summoned me, My Lord," Geryon growled, shaking a head of lion-like golden curls and twitching a tail tipped with a scorpion's stinger.

"We need to go in deeper to find the Lost Souls," Neal told the monster. "Will you take us?"

"It would be my pleasure," answered Geryon. "But beware that not all is as it appears to be. Even gods have gotten themselves chained down here for lack of vigilance."

With that, the two men climbed onto Geryon's back and the beast took flight, tearing off into the howling winds, leaving behind the land of the lustful, heading straight into the heart of a raging storm.

* * *

AN: Neal's incantation is a line from "Howl" by Alan Ginsberg, a beat poet and friend/lover of Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac. Every time they mentioned "Moloch" on _Sleepy Hollow_ , I always thought of that poem! Geryon is a character from both Greek mythology and _Inferno_. I will be mashing up both versions of him here.


	5. The Thin Green Line

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note: This story's present takes place concurrently with the battle against The Sorcerer's Apprentice in Storybrooke in "The Outstanding Balance of Morality".**

* * *

CHAPTER FIVE

THE THIN GREEN LINE

When Milah had awoken, half drown, she was in the middle of a dark wood. It was a terrifying place that reminded her of the stories she'd once heard of a hollow infested with a luminous fungus that brought nightmares to life. But this was a place where the nightmares were real, not an intoxicated haze of magical manifestation of fears. You didn't wake up in Tartarus. The monsters here wouldn't splinter into dust at sunrise, if there was even some imitation of a sun to rise at all.

There wasn't in the woods. She'd wandered for what seemed like days, attacked and chased by three beasts she could not escape. Just when she'd thought they would tear her limb from limb and leave her to some twisted agony of being healed to start the hunt all over again a woman in a tattered cloak had appeared with a tarnished sword and fought them off.

All-in-all, it could be worse. Her savior had fought her way through other worse locations with more unforgiving climates and ferocious beasts. There was at least some comfort it not being the only one tossed down here and forgotten by the gods in the midst of Hades' failed coupe. Thankfully failed from what she'd heard, because Hades' dumb little lover finally got her head out of her curly red cunt and realized she was being played.

Milah couldn't say she felt any sympathy for this Zelena being conned into using her misguided "true love" to restart Hades' heart only to have the god apparently attempt to murder her own daughter. Not that the child should have existed, apparently. It was a product of the witch committing rape, circumstances that only came to be because that horrid little blond slut had screwed up the past.

None of them remembered what came before, of course, but Hades had let it be known some time ago that someone had meddled in the past so certain dead were alive again and some who'd been living happy (or not so happy) lives were suddenly dead, torn out of the mortal coil against the intentions of fate just because that idiot girl fell down a hole and _Killian_ couldn't bare to not be glued to her not-that-great ass.

"You're stewing again," a voice interrupted her thoughts of the small campfire in one of the few dry spots they'd found. "And I don't mean the edible kind."

Milah paused in her stirring and grouched, "I'm sorry. It's difficult to get over being murdered by my ex-husband while I stupidly helped him help my ex-lover's new whore rescue him in a failed attempt to make up for my adultery in the hope of finally being able to see my son and make amends for abandoning him only to discover that my ex-lover was resurrected by Zeus for that little slut on the wishes of my son who deserved life far more than either of them. Never mind he made himself Zeus' eternally indebted minion to give her that most _wonderful_ gift!"

"Yes, well, that is horrible," Nimue conceded, taking a seat beside her. "But my lover helped turn me into a psychotic demon virus that trapped me in a splintered state that would drive even Geryon mad. I hurt everyone I loved while my soul was tormented. I watched as generation after generation was infected by that darkness, compelled to encourage it, until I had nearly forgotten my true self."

"Why couldn't you have followed through with strangling that dumb bitch when you were forgetting?" Milah snapped.

"Why couldn't you have killed that pirate and taken over his ship? Then my true love wouldn't have been murdered just for the hell of it?" Nimue countered. "Believe me, no one wanted more than I to kill that pathetic excuse for a Dark One. She was supposed to have the light in her soul to use that Titan's magic to put an end to the Darkness for good. Not that I could encourage that, of course. The Curse prevented it. But she was supposed to be stronger. Instead she was subverted by a parasitic twin whose darkness enticed that demonic power. I suppose the girl did fight it with her magic even if she was unaware of her splintered nature, but all that resulted in was a pathetically spayed Dark One. She couldn't kill. She couldn't heal. And her light and desperation to be free became her twin's lust and desperation to save your pirate."

"And now she's up there riding the man I was supposed to break, your lover's remorseless killer, my son will never see his son again, and we're stuck here eating swamp rat, all because two fools decided the best way to avoid having a failure of a child was to curse her before birth and then throw in a magical wardrobe with a puppet and they're all living happily ever after," growled Milah. "Where is the justice in any of it? You killed a mass murderer and feared only being left behind by the man you loved. And for that you were turned into a monster. I left a man, a life, that made me miserable because I was given no choice in a world ruled by the needs of men, and I don't deny I committed horrible acts in that new life, but why should my son have suffered at the hands of both of my lovers? The gods are worse than greedy children. They care nothing for us."

"That is true," agreed Nimue as a rain began to fall again. It never let up for long. "You worked hard to purify your soul and were betrayed for doing what the gods demanded. I never even got that chance."

Both women grimaced and mournfully ate their stew, human appetites not curbed just because they were dead. Another punishment of this hell, it seemed. One could never starve _to death_ , but one felt terrible hunger if it wasn't satisfied. And one felt the darkness in their soul, the stains that hadn't been washed away.

In the case of many, there was a thin line between The Underworld and Tartarus. Many unclean souls that could easily be sent here. But only the worst were sentenced without a sort of probation, an attempt to atone for their sins. It was supposed to be proof that the gods were merciful.

The Underworld was a place where a person could purify their soul, learn lessons they'd failed to grasp (or perhaps even be taught) in life so that they might reduce an otherwise eternal sentence to Tartarus. The "unfinished business" was rarely for good souls, most not even staying a day, just long enough to make a call to those they'd left behind before getting over the trauma of death and being whisked off to Elysium.

Hades' realm was for the unclean. And there were many souls in it. Some were not bad sorts, just overwhelmed by what life expected of them. There were those who refused their destiny, some going so far as to cut it out. They were the most frequent users of the communication line to the world of the living, their time in The Underworld reduced if they could convince their loved ones _not_ to avoid their own. And people born into positions of power, usually kings and queens, but lived negligible lives, doing neither good nor bad. And, of course, those who suffered violent deaths, unable to find closure and acceptance with their demise before their life spark was snuffed out.

If Milah had been a better soul, she considered, she might have been in the latter category. But she wasn't one of the vanilla souls of The Underworld. She fell into the less flattering masses. Milah had been prideful, too good for her village, her husband, even her son, and by becoming a pirate she'd still not found her happiness but could take it from others, reduce them to the poverty she'd endured. The punishment for that, constantly tested in the choices she made, to follow examples of generosity or envy, was an unpleasant existence, but it was one she'd been working toward freeing herself from one child at a time, protecting them from really bad sorts, a terrible labor at first that she eventually began to understand even appreciate the work itself. That had taken a very long time, but she had. And because of that, she had been _so_ close to leaving. All she'd had to do was see her son again.

Her one failure in that, as her time had been nearing its end, was probably in seeking out Killian's brother, that envious shit who so desired what made other people happy that he'd harmed them in order to deprive them of what they could not have, _including his own brother_. But Liam had never learned anything in all of his centuries there and was easily duped into working for Hades while Milah had tried to work _against_ him. She helped that slut and her ex-husband because the ultimate reason was good even if she despised them both. And this is what she got? Forgotten by Zeus, separated even farther from Baelfire so she would likely never get to fix things between them.

Perhaps it was what she deserved, but it made her angry that after all she'd achieved, all she'd done toward redemption, she was just tossed in that fucking river and left here to rot while the man she'd used who was an even worse villain than she had ever been, who'd murdered and raped and betrayed was so easily sent back to please some dumb bitch who had no qualms about fucking the same man who'd banged her kid's grandmother. Yes, the dumb bitch was created by a curse to be as she was, so Milah couldn't fully hold that against her, but she _could_ blame the woman Baelfire loved for not being strong enough to defeat that magical hereditary parasite and Emma Swan's family of selfish idiots who apparently had no idea their kind-hearted savior child had been replaced by her dark-hearted sister by that green witch's spell despite her personality and behavior, from what Nimue had related, doing a near 180 from a woman of justice who held villains responsible for their actions and put her son before herself to a villain-fucking whore who abused prisoners, neglected her child, and acted like a bitchy, drug-addicted teenage girl. Milah could blame them, including her husband who either was too self-centered to notice or too cruel to care that while Emma Swan might deserve punishment for being so weak and unable or unwilling to save Baelfire with True Love's Kiss, it insulted their son's memory and sacrifice to let some dark, slutty version of Baelfire's lover destroy their grandchild.

They had _all_ failed their children. Yet why did only she have to suffer here? And on what grounds had _Killian_ earned a second chance at life while his body rotted but she did not? She was sorry for what she'd done to her boy. _He was not._ He didn't even care that she'd been thrown in that river _and he had no idea that she had been using him_. How could he _love her_ and not care? How could he being such a despicable soul and be returned to satisfy some blood curse parasite whore while she was sent her and her son was enslaved by Zeus? Clearly Baelfire had been tricked, once again put his trusting nature in the wrong person... or being because he loved too deeply.

It was rather amazing that she and Rumplestiltskin had created such a child. She the arrogant slut. He the cowardly tyrant. Perhaps there was something in his grandmother's blood that wasn't tainted by her darkened heart, that instead protected his from what vile and pathetic people his parents were. But that "gift" had turned into his curse over and over.

Milah blamed herself more than any of the others involved. Other than Hades and Zeus, anyway. Well, also Pan. That sick little fucker had hurt her boy and never should have spent more than a minute in The Underworld.

A rustling in the bushes and a feral growl startled both women to their feet, Nimue drawing the blade that had once been Excalibur.

There was never much time to rest down here. Monsters were everywhere.

* * *

AN: So, from bromance adventure to a gal pal camping trip. I don't particularly care for how either Nimue or Milah (last season) were portrayed. OUAT has an unsettling way of vilifying women. Originally, Milah was a woman you could hate but understand. She hated her husband. She fell in love. She chose the love of a pirate over her son. But then she became even worse. She didn't even leave Baelfire for love. It's now implied that she was just using Hook, that she seduced him into taking her away. By that reimagining of her character, perhaps she planned to kill him after getting to Neverland and go from first mate to Captain. And Hook, of course, no longer seems to give two fucks about the woman he dedicated 300 years to getting vengeance for, which given Retcon Milah's con shouldn't surprise her yet given that he genuinely seemed obsessed with her only to so easily shrug her off for, essentially, her daughter-in-law, would surely tick her off at least a little. And then Nimue. She killed Vortegen who was a genocidal maniac, but that's shown as a horrible thing to have done just a few episodes before Cora and Liam are being whisked off to Heaven for not even being sorry for mass murder? Like, WTF, guys!? Suddenly she's this heartless reptile woman wrecking havoc and turning Merlin into a tree and strangling Emma somehow, but there's no rhyme or reason for it. It's the same bullshit as Cora essentially getting raped and turning evil because her attempt to stand up for herself and what's right was squashed by some dude and a selfish bitch. That ticks me off. Nimue was a character with great potential, with fears and ambitions that could have been humanized but they just went full snake bitch instead, another PoC the show sacrificed to evil so assholes could endure. Milah got a hint of humanity in willingness to stay with her husband for their son, but then the moment he signs that contract they turn her into a con-artist whore who traded a chump husband for an easily manipulated pirate. These are just two of the many, MANY awful portrayals of women on this "modern" fairy tale that's supposed to be about "strong women". Pretty sure even Passions did a better job of that.


	6. Here Be Monsters

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note: This story's present takes place concurrently with the battle against The Sorcerer's Apprentice in Storybrooke in "The Outstanding Balance of Morality".**

 **Note: I thought Isaac was dead. Now he's going to be back on the show? If he didn't die on the show, then assume he died at some other point. Maybe the mysterious plot device "alchemist" killed him for The Apprentice before the crazy sorcerer killed him. Ugh. Why are those asshats bringing back their bad fanfic author proxy?**

* * *

CHAPTER SIX

HERE BE MONSTERS

Geryon was a strange creature who'd once been a man. Or mostly so. He had the blood of Giants running his veins - or did when he was alive - and long before the ruthless King Xavier he'd ruled that arid region of The Enchanted Forest. He'd ruled through military might and subterfuge, the latter which had clearly passed down through his descendants, until he was killed by that little brat Hercules who'd spent far too much time hanging out on Mt. Olympus with his old man in between the ridiculous trials he was given to prove his manhood and godliness.

Zeus never did like anyone who could outwit his games, his little stories that he made for his and the other gods' entertainment, and so Geryon ended up in Tartarus tasked primarily with keeping tabs on those sentenced for fraud - as he essentially had been in the days before mortals born in The Enchanted Forest were sent to Tartarus.

While Giants had no great powers in The Enchanted Forest, nothing more than oversized humanoids with a gift for growing magic things, in the world now ruled by the gods, and in all of their realms, the magic allowed them to take on their true original forms. That of monstrous creatures.

He was the son of Chrysaor and Callirrhoe and grandson of Medusa - the original one, not her female descendants who assumed her name and weaker variations of her powers - and before taking over that kingdom in a sort of exile had dwelt on the island Erytheia of the divine kingdom Hesperides. He'd been more easily passable as human than others, which had aided him in starting a new life out from under the thumb of the gods... until they took control of that world as well.

In Tartarus, he could not take on that human form, but for his face, giant-sized as it was. He essentially resembled a manitcore but with the torso of a wyvern rather than just the wings and limbs of a leopard rather than a lion. His family was full of feline and reptilian cousins and then there were the manticores, wyverns, and such in other realms, all descended through some less intelligent aunt or uncle... more than likely an aunt and an uncle who had that incest love thing going that the gods enjoyed but got it on in a mortal world, leading to powerful magical creatures that could come close to mimicking sentient beings in some understanding of their languages and behaviors but were too driven by their primitive needs to ever be anything more than freakish leftovers of a bygone time rounded up to be showed off and slaughtered by wealthy kings.

Many of them ended up here. The kings, not the simple-minded descendants of Giants. And Geryon greatly enjoyed having fun with them. Like Fraud, his innocent face fooled them long enough to be stung by his scorpion-like tail. They always looked so shocked, but then one thing the gods had done well was to make Hell a place where traditional expectations did not always exist.

Geryon was a warrior, but his face was kind. He had lived most of his life as a man, but he was trapped as a monster now, dwelling in the shadowed depths below the cliff between the seventh and eighth circles with his only true companion his two-headed hound Orthrus, the brother of Cerberus, who was cast out from the litter for having only to heads, the poor little pup. He guarded Geryon's herd of magnificent red cattle just fine with only two and the occasional help of Eurytion, a rather frisky Centaur who had a fetish for human women and met his end after one particular king tricked him at his own game to bed princesses and he ended up meeting an assassin's blade.

The gods had once greatly enjoyed raping human females, but they didn't take kindly to the monstrous offspring of unsanctioned immortal/mortal couplings, like Centaurs, muddying the blood even more and chancing the production of truly freakish beings that might run amuck of their worlds and ruin the carefully choreographed fun. There was a certain logic to that even if their method of enforcement was hypocritical and brutal.

Their fates had actually ended up intertwined, Eurytion's and Geryon. The Centaur's crime and punishment had been meant to draw Geryon out, to make him vulnerable to Hercules' attack with that damned arrow dipped in the venomous blood of the Lernaean Hydra, the same creature used to lure Davy Jones to _his_ fate. The gods were anything if not utterly unimaginative, reusing the same plot devices over and over when not pulling some new made-up bullshit like magic golden apple out of their asses just to look like they had some great plan and control over it all.

Geryon knew otherwise. He was old enough to remember the stories his parents told of their parents, of the war with the gods, of how those with human form were chosen over those of other forms and conquest of other worlds favored over attempting to cohabitate in their own realms. They might be immortal, but they were all just as petty and xenophobic as mortals. And they cared little for the beings they trapped here. Any empathy for them was left to their unkindly indentured guards, beings like himself and Jones who'd been afforded more leeway in their punishment just because Zeus and his cohorts were either too lazy to do their own dirty work or didn't want to actually see how horrific it was and have to face what monsters _they_ had become.

And so though he resembled a monster out of nightmares, kind face aside, Geryon considered himself far less of one than those who had labeled him so and trapped him here. He had accepted this form he was given and took honest pride in his intricately patterned reptilian hide, hairy paws, and a scorpion's tail, never letting himself turn into the unkempt mongrel of many of his relatives here. He had practiced his flight in all the circles, through all the various weather conditions, honing precise movements of his ascent like a diver swimming to the surface of the sea and his descents akin to the falcon's he'd once watched plummet in their death-dying stoops to snatch the gulls circling near his castle's shore. Yes, he was a bit of a sullen, resentful falcon, but he refused to let this prison get the best of him or lose confidence in himself just because he'd gotten himself tricked into this awful fate. So he kept his beard neatly trimmed and he helped the few travelers who wandered into dangerous shadows near his plot of land, the unfortunate Lost Souls that Hades drop-kicked into the Styx either for annoying him in some way or just because he figured the monsters down here needed some distraction and motivation.

Though the word around Tartarus was that Hades had sequestered, manipulated, and sacrificed some souls in a manner that did not sit well with the gods. Well, perhaps did not sit well with Hera. Zeus usually could care less, but his sister-wife had a just a tad more heart where mortals were concerned and had even dispatched others to rescue a few stolen by Zeus or Hades. Sadly, Poseidon seemed to be the only one in that family who could keep his dick in his pants. Or on the female side of it, keep from lifting her skirt for dick. They were a bunch of randy fuckers, really.

And while many of them were off having orgies, Hades was using a con that made even Geryon a bit proud to pull one over on his brother and nearly succeeded. He didn't, of course. Because the gods never could fully understand the minds _and hearts_ of mortals, humans in particular. And so Hades was either obliterated or kept in some sorry state at Mt. Olympus as punishment, no one down here was entirely sure. And the souls he'd thrown in or tricked other humans to do so had been wandering around for what seemed a good few years or so now, their fate becoming far more perilous as Hades' replacement was clearly less inclined to sacrifice some souls for a hunt, no matter how despicable they were.

Geryon could respect that. He was a fraud by nature who'd enjoyed tricking people. He'd had a good laugh over Hades' fun making vile villains think they were sailing off to Heaven rather than four point restraints and a seat before three brutal judges all too happy to send them here. But he could respect that the most recent Lord of The Underworld wanted to play by the rules. After all, he didn't send those souls here and they were never meant to be sent here. Hades was just lazy and sadistic and feeding the beasts with meat they could catch on their own, make a competition out of it to feel just a bit free again, was his easier way of keeping things running smoothly.

As smoothly as anything could in Hell.

But it was becoming a problem. That one con-artist that Geryon had captured kept escaping from his pit and was turning out to be more trouble than he was worth. The fraudulent prince and that crazy motherfucking nobleman were also a menace in that they wasn't remotely afraid of _any_ of the monsters here and seemed to think that _they_ was hunting _them_! While it was impossible to die in Tartarus, getting stabbed _still hurt like a sonofabitch_ and being _tortured_ by some poncy little fucker _really hurt_.

The biggest problem, of course, was all the former Dark Ones. That was a mess the gods hadn't counted on. Somehow it had slipped their attention that Prometheus' spark could still be ignited. Or it had failed to reach Zeus while Hades became well aware of it and manipulated events to ensure it was used to free up that demon sword to free all the souls bound to it. Of course, they were supposed to wreck havoc on that mortal town and provide a distraction it seemed, but one of the Dark Ones (former at the time) found a way to alter the magic (probably because he had fairy blood) and send the lot of them _here_ while keeping the power for himself. Of course, so much unshared power was surely driving him as utterly insane and evil as it had the first Dark One, but yo had to give the guy credit for screwing over both Hades _and_ Zeus. That took balls!

And so Geryon was not terribly surprised when he felt a tingling in his paws, a summons to one of the outer circles as he was flying around his property, descending in lazy circles around the waterfall of the River of Fire that showered flames and boiling blood down upon the rocks.

Altering his course, the part-Giant turned mutated beast leveled out and headed for what looked from high above a glowing green tributary but was actually the termination point of the River of Lost Souls. Those tossed in it could at least be grateful it did not reach the inner most torture chamber of Tartarus. But Geryon wouldn't mind if his master sent a few of the Lost Souls there directly.

Swooping down into the green muck, Geryon was instantly transported to the Howling Plains and landed lightly on the parched soil.

"You summoned me, My Lord," he addressed the fair complected man who smelled of diluted immortal magic and his own unfortunate servitude.

"We need to go in deeper to find the Lost Souls. Will you take us?"

"It would be my pleasure. But beware that not all is as it appears to be. Even gods have gotten themselves chained down here for lack of vigilance."

With that, the two men climbed onto Geryon's back and the beast took flight, tearing off into the howling winds, leaving behind the land of the lustful, heading straight into the heart of a raging storm.

* * *

AN: I felt compelled to include Geryon as a sympathetic character, a throwback to the primordial times that the gods wanted to escape by their creation of the books and enslavement of the magic worlds. He was a fraud, but his death was also a bit tragic. As you probably guessed, he was hunted and tortured by James and Gaston at some point and is quite angry over Zeus letting Hades' minions run free for sport or out of apathy when some of them are full-on psychopaths who should have been sent straight to some pit and trapped there instead of whoring it up in Underbrooke. There's also a connection between his character's family tree and a short story arc in the second part of _The Outstanding Balance of Morality_. I also didn't want to get stuck with Davy Jones and Liam for the entire journey! Also, on the matter of the rivers, it's rather confusing, isn't it? It seems that all five rivers: Styx, Lethe (unmindfulness), Cocytus (lamentation), Phlegethon (fire) and Acheron (woe) flow through both The Underworld and Tartarus and Lethe also between The Underworld and Elysium so souls can drink from it and be reincarnated if they no longer wish to spend eternity there. Perhaps the best way to think of it for this story would be that "The River of Lost Souls" is a river within all of the rivers and so they can be tossed out of any of them in Tartarus.


	7. Heart of Darkness

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note: This story's present takes place concurrently with the battle against The Sorcerer's Apprentice in Storybrooke in "The Outstanding Balance of Morality".**

 **Note: Minor changes made to Chapter 5.**

* * *

CHAPTER SEVEN

HEART OF DARKNESS

Nimue had existed long enough not to wonder about much of anything. And she had existed in a state nearly equivalent to some tortures that existed here in Tartarus for most of that time. Her soul had been fractured, fragmented into a sort of parallel existence in three different states of being, tormented by being incomplete more than being in The Vault of the Dark One, the mind of _a_ Dark One, or The River of Lost Souls from which she'd been unable to escape even to Hell, trapped like all the other Dark Ones in unsatiated madness, trying to pull in those who traveled upon the water, tearing at the corporeal forms of those that took the plunge until the other parts of her combined with that pitiful shade and she traveled over the falls and was spat out deep the bowls of the realm of the gods.

She was free now, even if she was still a monstrous thing. But she'd learned to live with that. Just as she was learning to live here surrounded by greedy fools and vicious monsters. Not much different than life after her first death, really, Nimue thought with a grimace.

She'd sent the three-headed hell hound off to lick its wounds. It would be back. Perhaps it would get distracted by the fat louts that were easier to catch and required chasing for awhile, but it would return as it always did to hunt her and her companion. It was good to have one of those again.

Nimue's heart ached for Merlin, her friend long before they became lovers and intended to wed. They'd had one another's backs when they were just lowly enslaved mortals. Then they were enslaved by magic that turned them against one another and she was certain the gods had a good laugh over using two ignorant slaves to enslave entire worlds.

She didn't blame Merlin for re-forging the Grail into Excalibur, the sword she now wielded in its undead form, still blackened from the darkness it had pulled from two new foolish lovers. He hadn't known that the sword would fail to defeat her or that turning its broken tip into another weapon to bind her while sealing the sword in stone would mean an unbroken line of evil. That it would pass down through the ages was something kept hidden from his "sight" until the blade was fashioned, and then there was nothing to be done about it but train acolytes to try and steer the darkness toward those who would either burn out quickly or could contain it without trying to burn the worlds. And all the while fighting against the machinations of the gods who had their own minions, who sometimes even interfered themselves in disguise.

Those immortal fuckers didn't come down here, at least. Yes, they were left to rot, but it was probably better than what sick pleasures they might inflict on the already damned if they did more than lazily masturbate in front of a magic mirror or crystal ball to their favorite pit of carnal sin before heading off to an orgy.

As Nimue dipped the sword in the foul lake to wash its accursed blade everything seemed to tremble for just a moment and the echoing screams of the tormented were briefly silenced.

"What was that?" Milah asked in the space before the screaming renewed.

"Order fighting chaos," Nimue answered with a grimace and amended, "Phlegyas said a prisoner intended to be sentenced here after interrogation escaped back to the mortal world after killing Thanatos with his own sword and may be planning to take the ancient curse that your former husband reshaped into a passive form of inter-dimensional transport and unspin Rumplestiltksin's magical threads binding it to restore to its original form of pure destruction and unleash it through a portal so as to destroy all the worlds bound to the gods, possibly causing some damage to Mt. Olympus itself if the gods do not unbind them before he succeeds."

"You didn't think to mention that?" Milah sputtered.

"I thought patrolling while you prepared the meal and then eating before that mongrel or a mob of hunger-mad idiots trampled our camp was more prudent," returned Nimue. "And probably has little baring on here. Whatever destruction may flow down through the rivers can hardly be worse than what is already here. If it vaporizes a few monsters and mass murderers, then what is the harm?"

"My son is bound to Zeus!" Milah reminded. "Your lover was in The Underworld before I was tossed down here, and I doubt he has moved onto green pastures. The nexus of those rivers is in The Underworld! You're saying this lunatic could destroy the place! What would happen to the souls there?"

"Obliterated, I suppose?" shrugged Nimue.

"How are you so calm? So nonchalant?" Milah hissed.

"Merlin would know the risks. He could choose to move on, move beyond the threat or not. That is his choice to make," Nimue returned. "You son is bound to the gods. He would not be left to suffer there. The rest? I spent too many years being utterly apathetic to the suffering of strangers to find it in me now to care when it serves no purpose but to increase my own suffering.

"This is where we are, Milah," she told the other woman. "We may not have been sent here shackled by Furies, escorted by Charon or Davy Jones to rot eternally in this swamp or a desert or river of boiling blood, but it's where we ended up. We killed and lied and betrayed those we loved. We were selfish, prideful, greedy, and lusted for power."

"And I paid my debt," stated Milah. "I worked for _centuries_ to become a better person, Nimue. I despise the person I was in life, the choices I made. And it amounted to nothing!"

"It amounted to cleansing your soul," Nimue argued, "and this place cannot take that away from you. I would rather have been given the chance to atone for my sins and tossed in that river than never having gotten that chance. But I never even touched the shores of The Underworld and now the same darkness that is in this blade will forever taint my soul. I could venture to the very center of this wasteland and plunge naked into the frigid waters of Unmindfulness and it would not strip away my darkness to mingle with the sins of those happy few freed of their burdens and sent across it's more pleasant waters to Elysium. I lived as a monster, I died as a monster, and so that is what I am."

Milah looked sadly at the other woman who hid her reptilian skin under a deeply hooded cloak. The gods were cruel to have tricked her, exploited her weaknesses, and then by not having a thorough plan for what to do if their Grail was destroyed just have all the souls bound to it thrown into Tartarus. She hated her ex-husband, but she wouldn't have wished Rumplestiltskin down here, not when he _had_ done some good in his life, even as a Dark One, like protecting their son... even if that ended up failing spectacularly because of that redheaded bitch. If only she'd been sent here! With Hades gone, Milah would have been freed to take Nimue's sword and eviscerate the whore over and over and over-

"As fun as cutting the green bitch would be," Nimue cut off her thoughts in that creepy way she did, "as she did doom my lover to your ex-lover's homicidal mania, we'd best find drier ground. If the barrier between realms is destroyed, I'd rather not get sucked back into this foul soup and spat out in a worse place."

Nodding in agreement, Milah gathered her small pack of supplies and then laid her hand on Nimue's sleeve. "Looking like a monster doesn't make you one. It seems to me that some of the kinder souls stuck down here are the ones with scales and pointy teeth, so maybe you don't need regimented trials or some special magical spring to cleans your soul. You just need to have more hope than fear."

"Perhaps," Nimue considered as the icy rain poured down more fiercely.

But there was little of that in Tartarus. Hope was a scarcity that not even Pandora could find in these depths of eternal misery. Fear, however, was everywhere.

* * *

AN: If Neal/Merlin is a bromance... would Milah and Nimue be a hoemance? They're not exactly the purest of souls!


	8. Swamp Thing

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note: This story's present takes place concurrently with the battle against The Sorcerer's Apprentice in Storybrooke in "The Outstanding Balance of Morality".**

 **Note to sudoku: _Can_ Nimue read Milah's mind? Nimue no longer has magical powers she had before since she isn't the Dark One - her appearance being a sadistic punishment created by the magic of Tartarus but her soul was blackened by being the Dark One. And Excalibur retains its immortal magic _and_ contains the darkness pulled out of Emma and Hook (apparently the reason why the blade reversed its black and silver elements before its destruction as also happened to the dagger portion that Rumple reacquired with some kind of binding spell at the moment of the sword's vaporization from the Wiki page I read) which would probably give Nimue some affinity for the sword. So, perhaps, Excalibur does allow her to peer into the souls/thoughts of others which has helped her and Milah to escape capture as much as using it as a weapon. I just thought it would be nicely ironic that Nimue ended up with the sword that Merlin created and put in stone as part of the spell to bind her to the dagger... a process I'm not too clear on because, quite frankly, that whole season was utter bullshit that I only half paid attention to streaming on my computer while watching _Sunday Night Football_.**

* * *

CHAPTER EIGHT

SWAMP THING

Geryon glided slowly, descending in circles around a steep and foreboding cliff that loomed over a great swamp, finding shelter from icy rain in a cave that overlooked a chaotic battle. In The Underworld those who'd sought material goods with extravagance, greed, or ambition were given nothing and could acquire nothing, by good deeds or theft, though the former got them closer to leaving. Here... they were forced to joust and impale each other endlessly. It made something of a point at the different levels of avarice between those capable or remorse and redemption and those beyond hope of cleansing their souls.

"There's no way around it?" asked Merlin.

"You must travel through the battle to reach to woods. Another master and beast reside in the swamp. As such, I am not welcome beyond this point. The extent of my freedom lies between the realms not venturing through them. But Phlegyas will guide you through as he has others. He is no friend of the gods."

"I believe he burned a temple," recalled Merlin.

"That he did. In retribution for Artemis killing his daughter for straying from her brother's bed. Apollo killed him and ensured he was sent to Tartarus for a crime against the gods and sentenced to this swamp of fowl sludge and never ending icy rain. But since his crime was neither gluttonous nor greedy, he is not hunted by the beast who feats on the gluttonous or forced by Pluto, Hades' equally corrupt and sadistic predecessor, to fight."

"Sounds like fun," Neal grimaced.

"Many a monarch, sorcerers, and high-ranking clergyman are here, all without their power and jewels," said Geryon. "Sometimes I come here to watch their pathetic attempt at battle. Few of them have proper training. It was one such day that I now greatly regret I spied your uncle-in-law having a bit of fun at their expense. I could tell he did not belong, that he was one of the Lost Souls, and when he climbed up to my perch, I took him away, to learn his story. I do like a good story. He convinced me to help locate his companion, a nobleman he said had fought a great war against Ogres. I could tell that he spoke many half-truths, that he was not a pure soul. But few who end up here are. I did not, however, expect him and his companion to chain me up and torture me just to amuse themselves. If my own companions had not come to my aide, I doubt I would have this form any longer and I would be quite a pathetic creature, laughed at by the gods, a con artist conned by two humans."

"I know how that goes," Neal sympathized. "I used to pride myself on telling a good story, fooling people to get by. Thought I was a pretty good judge of character that way, but I guess I got rusty trying to live a legit life. I got conned by a woman who tried to kill me so she could kidnap my son and hand him over to my psychotic grandfather. I obviously got conned by Zeus..."

"Gods are uniquely adept at conning mortals," Geryon told him. "What is in your nature to sense deception never works with the gods. It is their most dangerous gift."

* * *

Like Geryon and others who served as the unwilling prison guards of Hell, Phlegyas had been transformed into something monstrous. He basically looked like Hell Boy without the trench coat. He was a man in life, a man who'd taken revenge for his family with a simple act or arson-based vandalism, nothing nearly as horrific and brutal as things the gods themselves did to satisfy vengeance for their kin - such as a sister carrying out cold-blooded murder on her brother's behalf just because one of his many booty-calls that he felt nothing for but the satisfaction of control wanted to take a lover who was actually around more than a few days a month _and might actually love her_. For that and because the gods were vane bastards who looked at the Giants they defeated and saw that appearance as the epitome of ugliness and ugliness as a horrible punishment, Phlegyas was turned into a monster.

At least some humans, unlike any of he gods it seemed, saw true beauty as being on the inside. And on the inside almost if not all of the gods were hideous. Some of the goddesses knew compassion and kindness, those that were not completely seduced and brainwashed by Zeus, and their lesser immortal minions like the Furies, Fates, Muses, etc. were not quite so rotten, having been created to exemplify moral qualities that the gods themselves quickly and easily forgot outside the rigid system of justice they'd set up with formerly mortal judges that Zeus and his cohorts rarely saw. They didn't really care about the justice, they cared about the entertainment, sitting up there in Mt. Olympus and looking down upon the worlds and the underworlds, watching drama and comedy and tragedy that they nudged this way or that.

To think it might change seemed hard to comprehend.

"Zeus took an oath in the Styx," Neal assured as they headed from cover of the cliff toward the swamp and what amounted to some kind of magically propelled fan boat.

"Perhaps he is counting on your lover failing then and all of his channels of entertainment ceasing to exist. Perhaps while you toil down here looking for unweighed souls that he is too lazy or cowardly to seek out himself and give rightful judgment, he is already looking for new unbound worlds to enslave to replace that multiverse of magical realms he acquired to use as a training ground for his half-blood pussy of a son."

"I'm sure insulting Hercules won't win you points," said Merlin and Phlegyas scoffed.

"What's it matter? No one gets paroled from this place. Sure, Hera might borrow a giant or two to take out an enemy, but it's right back to the same old pit. Makes it worse, really. A day or two in the sun only to smoted back to Tartarus," he growled. "Oh, many deserve it, don't misunderstand me. The ones fighting there, they all had it coming. The ones who wronged their own kind and other mortals in life. But you thumb your nose at the gods? It doesn't matter if it's the gods who wrong you, you pay the price, stuck in this infernal misery babysitting the real heathens. My daughter was murdered by that bitch goddess for trying to escape her rake of a brother who used his divine charms to seduce and impregnate my girl. He stole her virtue and his family had her taken out for trying to free herself from being a play thing and when I tried to get others to see what frauds the gods were, _not gods at all_ , just childish beings with magical powers who lived in a different world that seemed to ours divine immortality, they couldn't _have that_. But I wasn't the only one and that belief faded out until they had to find new ways to control other less magically potent realms.

"And so I wouldn't put money on your woman," Phlegyas told Neal. "Zeus may have taken an oath, but that doesn't mean he didn't direct his brothers and sisters and children to thwart her, to sacrifice _everyone_ rather than stand for defiance and giving up what they cherish most.

"I mean, really," the former king continued, "has it not occurred to you that perhaps this mad sorcerer was turned mad by Zeus himself? Perhaps the gods had already grown weary of your worlds or aggravated enough with the messes in their realms created by that time travel spell and all of Hades meddling that Zeus sought to simply destroy everything so there would be nothing for his brother to control and take him out in the process. Hades might have gone out more quickly, but that doesn't mean he'd stop the clock. All shows must end, and this one's been playing at Mt. Olympus for quite some time. They've only rehashed sleeping curses and true love's kiss and portal-related disasters a thousand times over by now, haven't they?"

Neal frowned deeply at the possibility and Merlin exhaled, conceded, "You may be right. Perhaps Zeus did send us here to distract us, a journey with a purpose and end that it is ultimately meaningless if his agents prevent Emma and her family from stopping an apocalypse."

"Which is why you must succeed," Phlegyas told them. "You must find your Lost Souls and you must take Mt. Olympus. The gods make deals, but they always have loopholes. And they only understand blood," he concluded as they passed a man impaling another with a lance, blood spurting everywhere.

* * *

Once they made it through the battle they came to a sort of mangrove forest with patches of soggy ground, the area patrolled by one of Cerberus' larger and more vicious litter mates - yes, Hades' pet was second to the runt of the litter with Geryon's mutt as the smallest. The beast hunted the gluttonous who doubtless longed for the days in The Underworld when all they did was suffer excruciating hunger, unable to satiate their desires no matter how much they consumed. There they were often found weeping at various taverns until they accepted a sort of forced asceticism and learned the lesson of moderation or simply grew angry and spiteful as if daring the Justices to send them _here_ , unaware of what true horrors awaited them.

"James spent time in here hunting the beast," Phlegyas reported. "I told him that he would fail. He came close, but then set his sights on Geryon, a more... colorful prey. That prince was quite a sadistic fucker. Makes sense he bore the Evil Twin blood curse."

"And he hasn't been back?" asked Merlin.

"No. I hoped he'd gotten swallowed by a hydra. A few Dark Ones did pass through here not very long ago, not the first batch of them. If you can avoid the battle and the beast and find some shelter from the rain, this is one of the more tolerable places to settle, at least until the magic recognizes outsiders and forces them to move on. It's an endless migration, really. But less trying than being unable to leave. There's at least some form of freedom and purpose in it.

"Not that I'd say many of the Dark Ones could appreciate that," Phlegyas amended. "They've mostly been mad the ones I've seen, driven to insanity by that dark magic, so I don't suppose an actual sentence of torture would mean much to them with their wits nearly broken either, half forgotten who they are - or used to be, craving the power that consumed them, to which they became addicted, like the sorry lot here craving a fat juicy bore or roast swan.

"Mmmm I do miss a good meal. Won't find any of that around here. Mostly swamp rat."

"I've never understood roast swan," Merlin mused. "It's fattier than goose, twice as gamy, and tougher than crocodile."

"But the feathers are pleasing to the eye," said Phlegyas and shook his head. "You clearly weren't in for fraud."

"My one attempt at impersonation did not go well," Merlin admitted.

"Yeah, no shit," Neal agreed. "You gave Emma nightmares for the rest of her life about getting molested by a freak usher. You made her hate movie theaters, man!"

"A regrettably poor choice," sighed Merlin. "I was unaware of the high incidence of pedophilia and molestation in regards to unsupervised and neglected foster children at that time."

"Aaaaaanyway," Neal asked, "which way did you see the Dark Ones go?"

"That way," Phlegyas pointed. "I wouldn't bother rounding _them_ up for a siege, though. The mad are no use in a coupe. It's the guardians you'll be needing."

"But you can't leave," Neal told him.

"Sisyphus couldn't leave either. And yet he did. You're Lord of The Underworld. Son of the longest reigning Dark One. Grandson of the Black Fairy and a con artist who very nearly made himself akin to a god. If Hades and that sorcerer could outwit his brother's punishment and escape The Underworld to your mortal realm, then you and this centuries old wizard who trained that apocalyptic nut ought to be able to pull one over on old Zeus."

A growl suddenly came from somewhere in the distance and Phlegyas walked back toward his boat. "If you want to round up some Dark Ones, be my guest. But don't expect me to wait here forever. Just because I have an eternity doesn't mean I want to spend it freezing in the rain so you can cart a couple of loons back to Davy Jones brig. Best leave them to be chew toys if you ask me!"

Phlegyas got back in his boat and pulled a tarp over his head while gnawing on what was probably swamp rat jerky.

"We really want to do this?" Neal asked.

"As Geryon said, not everything here is as it appears. And, perhaps, not at Mt. Olympus as well."

Neal grimaced at that. "When I was living in the Land Without Magic, never figured I'd end up finding out the world I was born in was an Orwellian dystopia even if it was far from a Disney fairy tale back when I was a kid. The words in those books turned out to be false hope rather than the real thing, language designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. And I let my kid get sucked into that, become a pawn of the gods. All I wanted was to be a good father, to help my family, and look what they've become?"

"Well, as the people in that world also say, 'The road to Hell is paved with good intentions'," sighed Merlin, amending, "A pity there is no road here. This won't be a pleasant walk through the woods even without a three headed beast stalking us."

* * *

AN: Phlegyas' life story is taken straight from Greek myth. He was just a king who took revenge for Apollo and Artemis having his daughter murdered for being unfaithful while carrying Apollo's child and was then killed by Apollo and sent to Tartarus to be eternally punished for defying the gods. Dante altered his punishment into that of a ferryman in the Fifth Circle to help Dante and Virgil through the swamp. Given his tragic life and death for putting family before the gods when the gods always put their family before everything, he seemed like the character to question Zeus' honesty and easy agreement to let Emma's actions determine the fate of the magical realms combined with sending Neal and Merlin on what might be a wild goose chase, or what he perhaps hopes will be so he can essentially allow a madman to cancel the "Once Upon A Time" project and move on to another multiverse of magical realms to conquer for worship and entertainment.

"Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." - George Orwell


	9. A Mother's Lament

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note: This story's present takes place concurrently with the battle against The Sorcerer's Apprentice in Storybrooke in "The Outstanding Balance of Morality".**

* * *

CHAPTER NINE

A MOTHER'S LAMENT

In the heart of one of the many temples at Mt. Olympus a goddess with milky-white eyes stood over a pit of swirling flames.

Though she appeared young and beautiful - and blind - Themis was old, one of the original gods who fought the Titans and in her temple she could see even with blind eyes things others could not. She had also once done more than simply fight the Titans, caught in a star-crossed affair with one on the side of the enemy that had produced a son. Themis was blinded by Zeus for her betrayal and that act led her son his own rash choice and punishment, a price she could not spare him.

A cluster of worlds seeded with magic by her son's actions had also paid a price a for that and might pay an even greater one if a mad sorcerer succeeded in pulling all those golden threads apart, crashing everything together in a chaotic mess to rival the beginning of all things.

Themis 'watched' in the fire as Emma Swan and her dark-haired companion and son received Thanatos' blade and with a swish of her hand altered the flames and viewed the blonde's true love and his companion in that eternal and putrid swamp.

It was a dangerous thing to make a play against Zeus. But Themis was not Hades, brash and arrogant.

And she was not alone.

There had long been an ideological divide between the gods, between those interested in power, war, and violence and those who favored wisdom, morality, and love. Might had made right on Mt. Olympus since the Titan War, but all ages come to an end.

Light footsteps gliding on the marble drew Themis' attention from the flames, though her blank eyes remained focused on it rather than Styx's fiercely beautiful daughter whose feathered wings brushed dust motes from the floor.

"The sword?"

"As it should be," replied Nike. "Aphrodite and Dyonisis provided the needed distraction for Athena to bypass the protections."

Themis smiled at that. One should never underestimate a slut and a drunk when they were gods. Dyonisis liked his entertainment, but to be gifted in its ways meant growing tired of the stale, recycled version that Zeus enjoyed and playing himself the inebriated fool at those endless parties. Aphrodite had once been impetuous, prone to handing out sleeping curses and implementing wars in her youth, but Athena had rubbed off on her. It also helped, of course, to have in the goddess of wisdom one fashioned by Zeus' own magic, which ran thicker than blood in his mind. His chide would not defy him. And that would, if they succeeded, be his undoing.

Others began flowing into the temple then, younger women who shared Themis' features and that of their father, the one they plotted to betray. Zeus had had many wives over the centuries, some who loved him and whom Hera tolerated, some who were taken as punishment for crimes and whom his sister pitied and helped severe that tie.

Themis had bore Zeus six daughters before that time came. Eunomia who wanted order, Dike who sought justice, Eirene who desired peace, and the triplets Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos whom their father called "The Fates" but who long ago had lost any true control over the metaphorical thread of life of every mortal from birth to death. Zeus had cursed them all, imbued her children with magic that would be forever smothered by his own agenda: control, injustice, violence, and the books with the golden bindings he had his three daughters spin when they were too young to understand that he intended to use their gift to enslave worlds, to use mortal souls for his own entertainment and those arrogant, selfish, cruel gods who attended his parties and kissed his golden sandals. Hades might have deserved to be cursed for his various crimes, including the kidnap and rape of Zeus' daughter by some mistress - though Zeus cared little about his daughter in that more than as his property - but Themis' children had done nothing but serve him with the powers he imbued into them at conception.

Themis was not one of the lusty cunts who sought Zeus bed and Hera had taken pity on her as it was Hera who took pity on that former mistress and the girl Hades stole. As Zeus had forgotten about his thrown-away lover and the child he left her with, so he had also forgotten about Themis and her children in time.

It had been ages since Zeus had even pretended to care that Themis still existed. It helped, of course, that she had long ago "given" her gift of foresight to Apollo, if Zeus' demanding she do so could really be considered a gift. In his arrogance, however, he had not considered that Hera would help Themis duplicate it in that oracle and retain her own. It did help that she relinquished her position as Judge of Mortal Souls at that time, reforming things to use former mortals, revered kings whom she had placed in Elysium. Removing herself from dealings with mortals and allowed Themis to fade into obscurity, forgotten as anything more than a model for a statue in the rotunda of the Halls of Justice. She was just an old blind woman now, a god that even the mortals under Zeus' thumb had little use for as they corrupted their own systems of justice, heroes engaging in the same amoral debauchery as their villains - just the way Zeus and his devoted gods wanted it to be.

Now they were the blind ones, blinded by arrogance and cruelty, unable to see that they had become as terrible in their desperate control over all things under them as the Titans ever were in their thirst for blood and chaos.

And now, as the worlds threatened to come undone, Zeus allowing everything to come undone rather than give up power he had never earned, Themis had begun to act, to finally get revenge for her beloved Prometheus.

"It's time to alert Hera," Themis told the assembled goddesses, "and restore Mt. Olympus to its glory."

* * *

The beast had been chasing them for some time, and without magic here there was little Merlin could do. He had no magic here. Perhaps if he was Lord of Death he'd have some new powers to fend off the monsters of Tartarus, but at present he was just a dead man in the company of a Lord of The Underworld who had clearly been hired as a paper-pusher not a replacement god as he too had no magic or authority to call off the three-headed dog.

The longer they were pursued, the more Merlin was convinced that the lizard-skinned ferryman was right and Zeus had played them, sent them off to get them out of the way as he let the worlds destroy themselves, burn to ashes his failed experiment so he could start anew without any leftover reminders, no vengeful mortals that might wage war on Mt. Olympus after discovering what the gods had done to them.

"We're running out of solid ground," Neal pointed out, breathless and fighting to pull his boots up out of the mud. "Solid being relative."

Another growl and Cerberus' larger, hungrier, rabid-looking sibling appeared. How exactly a beast with three heads coordinated its intentions and limbs had to be the magic of the gods as the unnatural thing prepared to lung.

It only got a loping start, however, as something dark and glittering came spinning toward them landing at their feet and Merlin snatched up the broken sword, instantly knowing its weight and grip - and the beast halted, snarling.

"I order you to leave," Merlin told the creature and though it looked very unhappy to do so, it slunk back into the bushes and out of sight.

"What the hell just happened?" asked Neal.

"Excalibur," the wizard reported. "Transformed and destroyed in earthly form by the darkness pulled back into its blade. I did wonder if it could be truly destroyed or if it came here with the souls bound to the dagger."

"Okay, but how did it-"

"It came with me, of course," the answer came from Nimue, stepping out from behind a tree and pulling back her hood.

"Of course," Merlin exhaled. "Two Dark Ones came this way."

"I'm the only Dark One," Nimue corrected and her lips twisted into a self-depricating smile, "or formerly so, though I remain monstrous here. The gods do seem to love their monsters."

Merlin swallowed thickly, finding himself unprepared for this reunion even though it's what he had been seeking. "Nimue. I never meant for you to be cast down to this place."

"I know," she sadly replied. "You were tricked by a witch herself tricked by Hades and killed by a cruel and lustful man and his blood-cursed whore. I fought a losing battle against the savior's light to make a true Dark One out of that... chimera of a woman and you fought against her twin's darkness to destroy mine. We both failed quite spectacularly."

"The twisted irony of the gods," muttered Neal.

"Quite," scoffed Nimue who cocked her head and amended. "I heard Rumplestiltskin's son had replaced Hades after his coupe that sent us here also failed. That you are being chased by monsters as the worlds tremble with a dangerous magic does not seem to bode well, Baelfire."

"Not particularly, no," Merlin conceded.

It was then Neal noticed the second figure standing in the shadows, brown curls laying limp in the rain, pale face pulled into an expression of shock. His own probably took on a similar one, Neal thought as he managed to croak out one word.

 _"Mama?"_

* * *

AN: Themis really was the goddess of justice who judged souls before that task was later given to three highly respected dead kings. You'll see her likeness at every courthouse, a blindfolded woman holding scales (and recently on Twitter circulated in that wonderful cartoon of Justice keeping Trump away from Lady Liberty.) She is also Prometheus' mother in at least one of his origin myths.


	10. Reuion

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note: This story's present takes place concurrently with the battle against The Sorcerer's Apprentice in Storybrooke in "The Outstanding Balance of Morality".**

* * *

CHAPTER TEN

REUNION

 _"Mama?"_ Neal sputtered, standing still, feet stuck to the ground. Literally. He had to pull his legs up with considerable effort to free his boots from the muck and move toward Milah, drenched and weary-looking in a tattered cloak she'd acquired somewhere.

"Baelfire," Milah responded with an uneasy smile and inquired, "What are you doing here? I thought you were Lord of The Underworld."

"Trying to do the job right and find the Lost Souls,." Neal answered. "You deserve what you worked toward."

Milah glanced toward Merlin and Nimue having their own awkward reunion and asked, "You came for me? Even though I abandoned you."

"Yeah," Neal grimaced, fidgeting with his gloves, "you did abandon me, Mother. And that was shitty. It was even shittier finding that out from your lover, never mind him handing me over to a child abusing psychopath when I didn't want to play stepson. You hated my father more than you loved me," he accused, "which didn't make it easy arriving in The Underworld and seeing you taking care of strangers' kids."

Expression falling, Milah responded, "I thought perhaps you just didn't care at all to seek me out. When Hades' witch whore said she'd killed you I wanted to toss her in the harbor and see her dragged down here. I wanted to toss your father in too. I should have. I actually tried to better myself and he let himself get blackmailed by a dumb whore into a fieldtrip to save her fuckboy. He killed me _twice_.. Once to take revenge for you. Again to save the child he damned by being a coward, just because Hades thought it would be an amusing test of loyalty.

"Everything your father touched, he destroyed, you know," Milah sneered. "Either because of his cowardice, or his innate weakness against the consequences of his own choices, be it the darkness he sought or the darkness his mother put into him . If I'd known what monster birthed him when the matchmaker set us up, I never would have consented to a marriage, to furthering the bitch's illicite mortal bloodline and the price that each and every one of her descendants would pay for her bedding that psychotic prick in some screwed up feud with her bitch sister or the gods or whatever the fuck immortal cunts think is so important that they can use us and throw our souls away like garbage."

Her anger ebbing, Milah concluded, "But I knew Hades would throw me in if I even tried to do the same of those cowardly fools pretending at being powerful. After Zelena confronted me with news of your death I hoped you would find me and I could tell you how very sorry I am. When your father and that blond bitch demanded my help, I knew my soul was forfeit. So I suppose I should have just taken my chance with Hades' slut."

"You died trying to make something right," Neal shrugged, "knowing it might cost you. I know that would count in your favor."

"Would have beens mean nothing here, though, do they?" Milah countered. "All I have is gaining your forgiveness, if that's even possible. And I am grateful to have the chance. I hope you can believe that I truly am sorry for my actions, son. I never meant to cause you pain."

"I wanna to believe that you mean it," Neal sighed. "I know you were doing all the right stuff to get out of The Underworld. But I let myself believe Papa had changed when he went to rescue Henry from Neverland and gave his life to save us. I took a really stupid chance to get him back, to give him the chance to redeem himself because he did all the right things too. I ended up dying and for what? Same as you helping him help Anna get to Hook," he reminded. "So Papa could turn right back into a power-hungry asshole before my body was even cold and father and damn another kid with another self-righteous, selfish woman. Same old story with the added bonus that Gideon was trained by my grandmother to murder the woman I love."

"I think, technically," interjected Merlin as he walked over with Nimue, "no matter what story your grandmother sold your father or half-brother, she was trying to murder Emma's Evil Twin in her own petty fight with the gods for trapping Pandora's descendants as intermediaries, unable to return to Mt. Olympus, barred from going higher than the clouds as they proliferated to ensure the mortal dependence on magic as the gods wanted it practiced and consumed. Rhuel Ghorm seems the only one of Pandora's children left that is an avid supporter of Zeus' system of policing magic. But I see your point."

" _Not to interrupt_ ," amended Nimue with a role of her reptilian eyes, "but it's unwise to stay long in one place. Even if the beast has been chased off for now, there are many ravenous souls, and given they are unable to catch the few edible creatures in this swamp, you can guess what they resort to, even if human flesh of magical design will not satiate them."

"Lovely," Neal grimaced. "Hopefully, Phlegyas and Geryon are still around.

* * *

The trek back toward the edge of the swamp's forest was unpleasant to say the least. Even with the icy rain there were swarms of biting insects and, of course, _leeches_ , that seemed particularly drawn to Neal, much to his aggravation and Merlin's amusement.

As they stopped to discern the right direction, something Nimue seemed able to do using the broken sword, and Neal was removing yet another leech with his lighter, Milah tried again with her apology.

"I was always sorry, Baelfire," she began. "I hope you know that, at least, even if I was too weak and too selfish not to give in to my unhappiness. I wish I could change that."

Neal let out a breath. "I didn't want you to be unhappy. Even then I could see that you weren't. But I at least hoped you'd love me more than you hated my father. You could have taken me with you."

"I did love you, Baelfire," she sighed, "but... back then it was easier for me to believe that I did not love you. And you and your father had each other. I was selfish and unhappy and I made myself believe what I needed to in order to seek out my happiness."

"Sailing the high seas with a man whose hobbies included murdering, raping, and severe alcoholism?" Neal snorted.

"You think I loved him?" Milah scoffed. "Killian Jones was a means to an end, but one I never achieved. I didn't have more freedom with him. I had _less_. Your father let me come and go as I pleased, too cowardly to stop me. Killian was too controlling and jealous to let me go anywhere without him accompanying me. But he also vane and foolish. Enough that I thought I could make him believe he had seduced me and then strand him in Neverland and have his ship and his crew who were never as loyal as he thought, who lamented behind his back that they'd have rather he died and his brother, the more competent strategist and tacticians, become their pirate captain. I was only Killian's first mate because I shared his bed, but I was the brains of our pillaging and plundering, and his men knew it. I just had to find a way to get rid of him and that scruffy little creep with a magic bean seemed a fine way to do it. If your father hadn't shown up..."

"Yeah, if Papa hadn't shown up," Neal retorted with a role of his eyes. "You'd have what, stranded Hook in Neverland and made me your first mate? I'd have never gone with you willingly after what you did to me. And don't pretend you'd have even wanted me."

Milah grimaced and admitted, "I was born in the wrong time, the wrong world. I never wanted marriage or children, but it was expected of me. I did want love, but I had no choice in whom I loved and so instead I was filled with anger and bitterness and _despair_. I drank and I caroused with strange men to smother that unhappiness until your father signed that contract and Killian arrived, and I knew that I could pretend no longer that there were ways to make my marriage bearable."

She let out a breath. "I obviously didn't foresee a lot of consequences to my actions, Baelfire. Leaving you, that I saw as the best choice for you. Your father was always a coward, but he did love you. He knew how to show you that. I never did. I believed that leaving you with him was the lesser of two evils. You deserved better than either of us, but there was no third option. And the war had halted then. I didn't think it would reach our province before you were old enough to leave, to go out on your own any more than I could have foreseen he would become the Dark One and-"

"And because of that I had to go out on my own before I was old enough," Neal cut her off. "Because of that I still ended up on that damn pirate ship and rejected _again_. I was abused, _tortured_ , hunted like an animal," he told her coldly, "I nearly _broke_.. For years all I had was the hope that Papa would come for me until that died. And then it was me finding my own way out, cause I realized no one else gave a fuck. But all of that, that 'lesser of two evils' fucked _me_ up so bad that I couldn't even accept true love when it found me. I let myself get conned again, believed that of course I wasn't good enough, didn't matter, would just fuck up Emma's chance at happiness.

"So I left a son without a father," he continued angrily, "only instead of being alone, he got the _greater_ of your two evils. I had to watch the woman I loved swooning over _Killian_ right in front of me when I was about to be ripped away from her and Henry all over again. You can't imagine how that feels, Mother! I risked my life to get my son back, I respected her needing space, and as the world was crashing down, all she wanted was to bat her eyelashes at the murderous drunk who ruined my life when I didn't think it could get any worse! When I tried to warn her, all she cared about was him, sharing her heart with _him._

"So of course I sent _him_ back to _her_!" Neal snapped. "I made another stupid deal, because even if she didn't love me enough to save me, I loved her enough to want her to be happy. I hated that it with someone I despise. I hated even more that my leaving her turned her into the sort of person who'd want to be with someone like that. I watched her turning into _you_. I watched _everyone_ forget about me, act like I never existed. I got more attention from a fucking _genie_ than my own family. _Then_ it turns out that wasn't Emma at all and Zeus played me for a fool, cause apparently that's my destiny in both life and death, to be every asshole's chump. And you think your leaving me behind was the _best_ choice?

"You can be sorry," he shook his head, exhausted with all of it. "But you can't change what you did and what it cost me any more than Papa can unsign that contract and give me back a life that wasn't constantly stalked by death. Papa might have screwed up my life by letting me go. But you're the reason I believed I wasn't good enough for anyone to love me. And that sucks way worse than just being alone."

Neal walked ahead of her then, but Milah refused to be dismissed even as she fought tears. "Then why come for me? If you hate me that much, Baelfire, why are you here?"

"I already told you. It's about doing the right thing," Neal snapped. "I'm here because no one capable of redemption should have that opportunity taken away unfairly and end up trapped down here, alone and suffering with the realization that none of the people they thought cared about them care enough to try and right that injustice. I'm here for all the Lost Souls that got tossed down here, robbed of that chance, by spiteful gods and selfish mortals, because the shitty deal I made at least gave me a day pass to do something good.

"Or at least I _thought_ it did," Neal growled, "but now I'm probably just playing the fool again. So that's your legacy. Married and killed by a coward. Used and forgotten by a manwhore. Gave birth to fool who sired a grandson who enslaved an entire world of innocent people to Mt. Olympus while having another teenage temper tantrum about magic because the surviving assholes in his family are, like you, always too busy being selfish fucks about their own happiness to notice Henry even exists outside of their nauseatingly boring and cliché stories.

"So _that_ is why I'm here," Neal told his mother. "I'm here to do the right thing. To set an example for my son even if he might never know about. I might not get to see him again, but I can still try to be the kind of person I wish my father had been. And maybe I can help Emma be the mother I know she wants to be so our kid has a chance of outwitting the hereditary curse of assholery."

"A slim chance," said Nimue.

"Many are the fools who fell into Zeus' traps, including myself," Merlin reminded. "I was blinded by my desperation to get justice for all the souls I damned by drinking from that cup. Zeus fooled me long before he did you, and I still fell for it. It seems that we are doomed as mortal souls, even given false immortality by the gods, to be blind to the guile of the gods."

"And because we're all idiots," sighed Nimue, "we may be trapped down here with literally no path out if the fallout from the destruction of those storybook worlds reaches the nexus of The Styx in The Underworld."

"And unless that remaining spark that triggered magic to grow is protected, any worlds that do survive the cataclysm would be again cut off and without magic," Merlin amended with a deep grimace while swatting a swarm of stinging bugs that resembled giant midges.

Nimue cut one in two with Excalibur, spraying green goo all over the front of Merlin's cloak and earning her a sour look before he continued, "All of those worlds and people who became dependent upon magic would be worse off than the people of that cursed town, no memories of knowledge to help them adapt to life without magic, many with no technology beyond wagons and millstones. Those saturated in magic like Wonderland and Oz will surely be completely obliterated."

"A lovely picture you paint," Nimue snarked. "I would imagine no one is going to clue that blonde idiot into the need to retrieve and protect that pathetic little flame you did such a _wonderful_ job yourself of protecting."

"Emma is not an idiot," Neal grunted.

Merlin scowled at his beloved. "I'm sorry for putting faith in the power of hope and love to overcome power and lust."

"You should be," scoffed Nimue. "With the gods in control, the later always wins. Any time it doesn't, the game is rigged for a greater purpose, to fool gullible mortals and create 'special' mortals who can contain more than the usual magic that they call 'saviors'. Ha! Only in that they are saving the gods' pet project, pawns to try and set right what annoying little mortals and their inextinguishable fight for freedom. They are the least free of any of us and end up tightening the shackles that bind us while being fooled into thinking they are freeing some kingdom and perpetuating the insidious con!"

She let out a dark laugh, amending, "I suppose Hades got in quite the ironic blow, helping turn Zeus' latest do-gooder into a selfish slut. And he decided to try and flip that back on his brother. But it was too late to fix what had gone wrong. Hades and others had thrown too many wrenches in his carefully constructed machine in the same way the gods had destroyed things for the Titans. But Zeus won't go quietly. He hopes he won't have to go at all. Just scrap his little experiment and start over.

"We will become pathetic monsters trapped down here while Zeus and his minions conquer new worlds to build them temples on the alters of which another crop of ignorant fools with sacrifice their free will for the reward of magic or religion or some new obsession Zeus thinks will brainwash them into prostrating before him and the rest of his small-cocked man-boys who want to stick their tiny dicks in every mortal maiden that their big-titted sisters want to murder for being so pretty that brothers are fucking them instead. Mt. Olympus is full of sick incestuous fucks crueler, uglier and more demented than the Titans ever where. And if that lunatic sorcerer could take them all out without trapping us, here I'd be all for letting _Lord Baelfire's_ little blonde distraction fail."

"And you're criticizing my doom and gloom description?" Merlin retorted.

"You disagree?"

"I happen to think the bond Emma and Neal share is more powerful than a distraction and could lead to great things if Zeus hadn't made his play first," replied Merlin. "I will concede the rest of it. Including the tiny dicks. At least with respect to many of the naked and passed out Olympians at the orgy. Zeus could have been using a glamour, I suppose, to distract us into believing he would help us all."

"Who needs guile to dupe a guy when you can use penis envy?" scoffed Milah and she high-fived Nimue, earning an annoyed look from both men.

"High-fiving. Really?" Neal grumbled.

"The kids liked to do it," shrugged Milah. "I didn't have a lot of other companions."

Nimue amended, "Your pathetic Dark One sister-in-law liked to high-five her delusional manifestations of our souls. I suspect the high-fiving was actually the influence of your lover, however. Though she was buried deep in her sister's psyche, she sometimes emerged in the form of actions of extreme dorkiness."

"I'm not gonna take that as an insult," Neal told the former Dark One.. "I like Emma's dorkiness. It's one of her most attractive qualities."

"You would thiink that," Nimue sniffed. "You're as bad a Lord of The Underworld as she and her sister were Dark Ones!"

"Yeah, well, you got eternally damned by drinking from Zeus'' sippy cup because you were jealous of your boyfriend."

Merlin agreed, "He's got you there."

"Both of you shut up!" Nimue growled. "I spent five hundred years having to share headspace with mostly small-dicked assholes . I was perfectly happy being free of all dicks until you two showed up to confirm my suspicions that I'm probably even more doomed than I already was! So thanks for that!"

"Stop being a such a bitch for a moment and focus on the 'probably' part," Milah groaned. "We're in a bad shit situation here. But until Zeus succeeds at helping his latest pawn fail - and we can debate how dorky or slutty or stupid my son's unfortunate true love is later - we've got a chance to get out of here, right? So let's do that! Get our asses back to _The Flying Dutchman_ and to Charon's Cave before we're divinely fucked."

"We came down here for a reason," Neal reminded, "even if we were being played. I'm not leaving the other Lost Souls to rot here for eternity. Or to torment the other souls that Zeus trapped here and don't deserve being tortured by two sadistic frat boys."

"Even if it means we're stuck here rotting with them because we run out of time?"

Neal frowned at his mother. "You think we'll fair better showing up in The Underworld at the end of the actual world? We'll have no place to escape to even with death suspended. And just because Zeus might not be able to throw us back down here if that part of the rivers dry up, that doesn't mean he can't chain us to some rock at Mt. Olympus and have our livers ripped out every day for the rest of eternity. Gotta figure his kid realized going against him is a bad idea, and probably not gonna get help from his doormat of a girlfriend who's like the total opposite of her Disney character, because I guess Hercules is actually a chip off the old block after all. Wouldn't even surprise me if his being dead was all part of the con!"

"That would actually explain a lot," Merlin agreed. "Either given Zeus abhors failure he gave his son a 'time out' under his uncle's supervision and promised him early release by helping fool his ex-girlfriend to double-cross Hades. Or he had Hercules throw the match against Ceberus to spy on Hades and the boy was never truly dead. Regardless, I don't foresee him or Megara aiding us now that they have eaten ambrosia."

"The Kool Aid of Mt. Olympus," Neal scoffed.

"What we need," Merlin stated, "is to find a way to stop Zeus and help Emma. Phlegyas is right. It's the only way to ensure we don't meet a torturous end in any realm. And we can acquire allies down here, particularly as long as death is suspended and The Furies are dispatched to mortal realms. If we can find a way out, we can bring more than just unjudged souls carelessly thrown in The Styx or the former Dark Ones that were pulled here by Chaos. This place _is_ full of monsters, but not all of them monstrous, their only sin putting humanity before Zeus."

"Leading a rebellion against Mt. Olympus," Milah shook her head. "The Titans couldn't defeat them _and they were literal monsters_. And as you said what about Prometheus?"

* * *

AN: Comments on Neal and Milah's meeting? Neal's a little more levelheaded than in his first confrontation with his father. He understands that his mother felt trapped by her marriage and an unhappy life with a cowardly man, but he has little sympathy for how she handled that situation and the one her actions put him in. I see their relationship a lot like Lucifer and "Charlotte" on _Lucifer_. If you don't watch that show, you should! Tom Ellis lucked out big time getting that role before A &E decided to bring back Robin Hood. He's sexy and hilarious and the writers have given _Satan_ the kind of genuine and believable redemption arc and meaty family backstory drama that Colin probably _wishes_ Hook had.

Part of Milah's words inspired by Albert's brother in _Victoria_ as he tries to answer the question why their mother abandoned them as young children when fleeing her marriage. His last memory of her is seeing her looking down at them from a window, crying. "Perhaps it was easier for her to believe that she did not love us. And we had each other."


	11. What About Prometheus

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note: This story's present takes place concurrently with the battle against The Sorcerer's Apprentice in Storybrooke in "The Outstanding Balance of Morality".**

* * *

CHAPTER ELEVEN

WHAT ABOUT PROMETHEUS

Even amongst the gods, the story of Prometheus was more myth than fact, for it favored Zeus that he had no direct connection to Mt. Olympus and could be written off as one of those monstrous Titans... as if the first gods themselves were not Titans who simply used magic to transmute themselves into "human" form. In terms used by humankind, it was a difference of nationality and ideology over race or ethnicity. In blood, the youngest of the gods were no different from the first of the Titans. But a ten year (Olympian years, mind you) war had pitted them against one another, mostly split down generation lines, with many of the children of Gaia wanting to preserve their isolationist ways while the majority of the third and fourth generations wanted to venture out, to change themselves in order to learn about - and later dupe and enslave - these creatures in "mortal" realms where both civilization and magic were in a nascent form.

That was the mistake of Zeus. And his hypocrisy. These young Titans presented themselves and divine beings to humans and thusly renamed themselves "gods". They wanted to augment the evolution of civilizations to prop their egos . But if one meddled in a way that didn't benefit _them_ , ways that gave humans the means to see that _they were not actual deities_ , Zeus preached the same philosophy of noninterference as their parents and grandparents - only his was utter bullshit.

Zeus lost those who were first tricked into believing in them, but that wasn't enough. They found more kingdoms, more worlds, and to ensure they were gods, they created their own "afterlife" realms and found ways to bind human souls to those worlds, to keep them from whatever was meant to come after for them, just as they trapped their own parents and grandparents in Tartarus for doing nothing more monstrous than the things they ended up doing themselves. All of it: Elyssium, The Underworld, Tartarus were a purgatory that imprisoned souls never meant to be there.

And the great majority of this greatest shame of the gods was Prometheus' unintended fault.

It all began with his birth millennia (by human standards) ago to Themis, one of the few Titans who did not take a side in the war and thus was welcomed to Mt. Olympus as a goddess, her past as a Titan expunged from the records as they started their civilization anew. Prometheus was himself a young boy at the start of the war and chose not to participate as it continued, siding abstention with his mother.

Later, his mother would be forced, on his beseeching, to renounce him to save herself, and thus the records now would say that he was the son of Iapetus and Clymene, one of the Oceanids and thus brother to Menoetius, Epimetheus, and Atlas. They were cousins of some degree surely, but their only close connection came after the war, Atlas having fought for the Titans and punished at Mt. Olympus to hold up the heavens, punished where Prometheus eventually joined him only to be freed many years later by Hercules in one Hera's tricks. Naturally, the assisted prison break did not go over well with Zeus, even if Hera had duped Hercules into it. Of course, Hercules might have been sent to spy on Hades with his orchestrated death by hellhound, though Prometheus doubted that Hercules would be _in on that_ part of the plot, given that for all of his bravery and might, he was not the brightest flame in the fire pit, as Hera had proven. Probably, Zeus had been able to see through his eyes or manipulate him in some way while also punishing him and using that punishment to gain favor with Hera, because that's the kind of father Zeus was. Not much different than letting his daughter Persephone get kidnapped and raped by Hades many years before just to let Hades think he had power before stopping his heart - but not bothering to rescue his daughter.

Such were the gods. More than the goddesses. Though it wasn't a gender-specific divide by any means. Prometheus had known goddesses like Artemis. Goddess of chastity and virginity! Only in the whitewashing Zeus presented to the sad mortals believed his lies! The daughter of one of Zeus' mistresses who was dosed with an aging potion by Hera, she popped out, instantly grew up, helped her brother be born, he grew up, and everyone knew those two were having lots of incesty sex and Apollo's many conquests were just a cover for that, since Artemis bumped them off if they tried to leave him while her claim of being the champion of chastity to avoid marriage was just so she could keep fucking her brother. Some even believed she killed Orion with help from Apollo, faking a hunting accident, because he was in love with her, found out about their relationship, and threatened to bring proof to Zeus that her virginity was a lie and Apollo's many love songs that he used to seduce mortal women were actually about banging his twin sister. Sure, Zeus had married Hera, but it an apathetic marriage of convenience of two the most powerful and well-matched magic-users that used magic to produce powerful offspring, not actual incest. Not that Zeus didn't seem to believe he was in love with Hera.

But anyone with a smidgen of normal emotional development could tell that what Zeus felt for Hera was a controlling obsession he believed was love. If Zeus truly loved his wife, he would not have others see such a majestic and solemn goddess as insanely jealous and vengeful and always in the wrong for his philandering and production of bastard children that created messes Hera had to clean up. Hera had actually helped rescue Persephone when Zeus would not, because she yet had an ounce of compassion that he had either rejected or never had to begin with.

Zeus remained jealous to this day, millennia later, that the first humans he duped into thinking they were gods erected their first temples to Hera, not him, and considered him her consort. Which was technically true. Hera was the oldest sibling , firstborn, who thus had the true claim to the throne while Zeus was the baby of the family, preceded in the line of succession by Poseidon and Hades. While the Titans did not see gender as determining succession, Zeus and his brothers had ensured that changed. Hera had not contested it, but those who quietly opposed Zeus believed that many of his actions sprung from fear that if he did not continue to show his might and magic superior to all others, that his sister's patience would run out and she would gather her supporters in a coupe to overthrow him.

Zeus had lost more followers than he had gained amongst the gods, of that Prometheus was certain. He'd met them, some when he was younger, some who'd come to see him and Atlas in secret with offerings to ease their suffering. Like Dionysus. The god of wine only became the god of _madness_ because Zeus pranked him as a boy, allowing him to rule Olympus for a day while he was away... which resulted in "escaped" Titans "killing" Dionysus, dismembering him, and boiling and roasting his body. Athena had been ordered to remove his heart first and put it into a doll so he could be resurrected in new form, but that didn't mean he was without memories of that horrific torture that Zeus thought would just be a bit of fun and games, and just to see if his magic that would one day create messed up mortals like Pinocchio could work as he envisioned. It worked in a literal sense, but the god was a prematurely aged, overweight alcoholic tormented by his original death.

That magic never had a good outcome, with immortals or mortals. People puppets just didn't lead to good things, probably because they would retain some qualities of their material's origin and Zeus ensured most true love saplings just happened to grow where true lovers met after utilizing murder to overcome some orchestrated obstacle and thus they were nourished in homicidal blood of generally sadistic people. But then nothing amused the gods more than mortals having to fight good and evil aspects of their own nature, so they often gave them an extra dose of one of the other. Well, maybe they loved raping more, actually, but other than that, it was the internal Good vs. Evil conflict, perhaps because it seemed utterly foreign to Zeus, who, in his twisted narcissism, believed that he was the perfect embodiment of goodness.

Zeus was a man-child for certain.

It took the Titans millennia to mature and grow wise, to choose order over chaos. The gods, they presented themselves as grown humans, but in the true forms that they had renounced, that they subverted with magic, most were still children stuck in childish ways, monstrous children that would have scales, six arms, and tails and refused to grow up and give up childish things. Without their perfection of the magic concentrated at Mt. Olympus, they never would have been able to overthrow their forebears or retain the forms they took with the games they played that allowed them to never have to grow beyond the petty and self-absorbed beings they were.

Without that magic, they never would have been able to enslave mortals. That, again, was Prometheus' fault for testing Zeus.

The enslaving of what the gods came to call "Storybook Worlds" began when Prometheus sought to help a land in peril. Even then Zeus had a penchant for bedding (and by bedding, mostly raping) young farmers' daughters. Naturally, the fathers tended to object, and in response, Zeus had sent a plague to kill off their livestock. Prometheus had stopped the plague and brought them new animals, and for that "crime" Prometheus' wife Clymene was stripped of her immortality and sent to live amongst them. Prometheus was never able to see her again other than in the flames of his mother's oracle. Or the son Deucalion that she bore soon after arriving in the small coastal valley with its once lush pastures.

Clymene was a strong woman. And she had not taken kindly to Zeus' punishment either. She told their son about the war, about the fallacy of the "gods" wisdom and heroism, and so Deucalion, when he was became a man, constructed temples to the ancestors that were being punished in Tartarus. For that Zeus unleashed The Styx upon them, creating a great flood that killed everyone in the kingdom save Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha who fled, leaving only the magic they put into the rocks. Prometheus' son and daughter-in-law had hoped the mountains would retain the memories of what had transpired and protect any people who came to live there from trusting in Zeus, keep them from submitting to whatever trickery or treachery he might bring upon them, for once a land had been touched by The Styx, there would always be some connection.

The first drops of Olympian magic had taken root, a nascent axis mundi that Zeus would not be able to resist using to his amusement. And though those people who eventually immigrated to that fallen kingdom were spared the worst of the enslavement by that magic, others were not so lucky.

Prometheus should have known better than to anger Zeus further. But he was still young then himself by immortal standards, time passing far more slowly at Mt. Olympus than in the world where his child had reached a ripe old age of eighty-two before sailing away to die in obscurity in another primitive human land. And he _was older_ than Zeus and did not take kindly to some childish little idiot placing himself on the throne, a being who made himself look like Atlas but was really more like that wussy little man-child cousin of his who worked the ferry docks, if his true Titan form could be equated to a wimpy little baby man.

Prometheus had not been thinking about the temper tantrums of young "gods". He had simply wanted to find his son, to find a way to restore what Zeus had taken from him. And so he'd taken a flame from his mother's oracle, a bit of Olympian magic, to ensure he could find his way home, and set out on his personal quest... until it became clear that Zeus had his minions tracking him, and then it became a flight, jumping realm after realm until at last he was captured, unaware then that he damned _every last one of those worlds_ by bringing that flame to them, binding them all to Mt. Olympus in a way that Zeus could design to his own intentions.

That began with Pandora, the first Fey, who presented Zeus' fist "gift" to the mortals of those worlds. It was not a gift, of course, but a trick. The gift was a jar used by the gods to capture many evils, harsh pain and troublesome diseases. Prometheus had used it to capture that plague. Pandora unleashed it again. But she used it for more than unleashing harm. She used it to _steal Hope_ to fill he jar's emptiness. Taking Hope locked those worlds in time, unable to grow and evolve as civilizations should but only as Zeus wanted. Then, of course, came the second "gift" in the form of "The Holy Grail" that brought Chaos from Tartarus into the mortal worlds in the form of The Dark One and shaped the magic Prometheus had sparked to grow into the way Zeus wanted, the way that would allow Prometheus' half-sisters The Fates to bind destiny to the written word and turn reality into stories for his amusement..

Because, of course, Zeus was clever and cruel in his punishments. Prometheus had found himself imprisoned at Mt. Olympus with Atlas, who'd been suffering his torment for some time by then, and forced to endure not only great physical punishment but watch as Zeus married himself to Prometheus' own mother and forced Themis to bare him children for his magical purposes, the last three being "The Fates" who would, against their own will, help create his insidious storybooks.

For many mortal generations Prometheus was chained to that rock at Mt. Olympus, an eagle ripping out his liver every night and by immortal magic regenerating it every night. And the books did their job of providing scripted reality entertainment for Zeus and the other gods. Then that little brat Hercules started to come of age while Hades was starting to get unruly in his position and Zeus began losing control of things. Hercules killed the eagle and built great pillars to free Prometheus and Atlas. Not that they were free for long, soon captured and this time sent to Tartarus, to the deepest level, an icy wasteland, the place for the worst of traitors.

It was there that Prometheus resided now, kept sane and not frozen solid only by the small spark he had with him, that Zeus had paid no mind because it was then extinguished. Zeus, unable to truly love despite his delusions otherwise, could not understand that the love for Prometheus' long dead wife and son still burned in his heart - for he was not dead, but sent here body, soul, and all - and that love could re-ignite and kept the tiny flame burning even after all this time, a tiny spark that pushed back the darkness and the cold. Pandora might have been able long ago to steal Hope from the humans with her magic, but that was the thing about Hope: it was harder to steal than you might think. You could never get _all_ of it. You could steal it, crush, leave nothing but ashes in a bowl, and yet like a Phoenix it could, with time, reemerged seemingly out of the darkness itself.

Where Love remained, Hope was never truly gone.

* * *

AN: Prometheus' backstory is a mix of several different variations and my own twists. If you're wondering, yes, the mountains with memories are those creepy rock trolls. Other bits and pieces of the story are vaguely factual. Did you know Pandora's Box was actually a jar? Rumple should have asked for the provenance on that dinky silver box he got somewhere, because it's clearly a knockoff, even if it's an effective prison for dickish dads and dumbshit wives.

I included Prometheus and his flame as a major part of this story because his myth is meant to be, like the Titan War itself, a metaphor of the struggle between generations, between parents and their children and parents needing to give ground to new generation for the perpetuation of society and survival interests of the human race as a whole. This is the greater struggle in the story between Zeus, who is essentially an abusive parent, and mortals who are like children struggling through an adolescence he doesn't want to allow to emerge into adulthood and independence. (Also, if you're wondering, Zeus has become somewhat inspired by Donald Trump.)


	12. Home On The Hell Range

Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.

Note: This story's present takes place concurrently with the battle against The Sorcerer's Apprentice in Storybrooke in "The Outstanding Balance of Morality".

 **Who is getting their hopes up from Eduardo Castro's interview that OUAT is getting canceled, or at the very least Jennifer Morrison is leaving this raging garbage dump fire of a show after the [series] finale cliche fairy tale wedding between Stepford Swan and Captain Rapist?**

* * *

CHAPTER TWELVE

HOME ON THE HELL RANGE

From the swamp of icy rain, Geryon carried them over a frigid land where the marshes froze over and the wrathful fought one another, not because they were forced as punishment, but because in their blind furry at being sent to this place, they _believed_ magic was making them tear one another to shreds.

Of course, dismemberment was only temporary, bodies only a magical manifestation of the hellscape the gods had created, and so limbs reattached and wounds mended to begin the battle all over again. Even those that fell through the ice would ultimately find themselves right back on solid ground, even more furious at whomever had thrown them in. It was nothing like The Underworld where the wrathful had their eyes clouded by a black smoke that diminished the more they learned gentleness. Here there was only the blinding red haze of furry that the damned brought with them.

Some distance from the bloodstained snow and ice the earth rose up into a plateau that rained down a waterfall of boiling blood that eerily had no effect on the frozen landscape. A multitude of souls wandered the frigid tundra, seeking some escape and staggering back from massive geysers of fire that erupted continuously all around them, often catching one or two who screamed in agony as they experienced being burned "alive" only to have their false bodies restored to be burned again before they'd even crumpled to the snow.

"Nice view you have from your front yard," Neal commented ruefully after Geryon had landed on the plateau.

"A reminder of what I was spared," the monstrous man replied. "I committed my so-called heresy against the gods before they completed their more regimented punishments. I was given this tiny jewel of land," he spoke of the small pasture and home, "surrounded by an inhospitable wasteland as far as they eye could see, unable to leave this rock. Foolishly, I tried to do so, to draw on the magic of the Titans, many of whom roamed Tartarus then unchecked. And for that defiance, this is what I became, unable to even truly enjoy the more comfortable accommodations I was given."

Folding his wings against his back, Geryon amended, "You should see the view from the back were the rapists, mass murderers and torturers are transformed into trees and eaten by harpies, chased and torn to pieces by dogs, and trapped in a desert of burning sand and burning rain. It's nice not have to travel all the way to the Howling Plains to get a bit of desert air when the wind blows in the right direction. Helps with my allergies."

"Sounds like our unfortunate journey to Camelot," scoffed Nimue, "that ended with Vortegen enslaving our people and slaughtering all who defied him."

"Ah, yes, Vortegen. He's down there somewhere," nodded Geryon. "We can throw flaming cattle dung at him later if you like. That's always a good bit of fun."

"As the kids say these days 'sweet'!" the former Dark One beamed, earning a glower from Merlin.

"What?"

"Isn't it enough that you assassinated him?"

"I only killed him once. He killed thousands of people," huffed Nimue.

"I'd just like a nice hot bath," sighed Milah, "and either a cure for this damned spell that has me starving even though I don't even have a real body - or something to eat that isn't swamp rat!"

"I can't break the hunger spell," Geryon lamented, "but I can surely give you quarters to freshen up and some sustenance for the journey ahead."

As he spoke, the ground shuddered and a massive two-headed dog came bounding toward them, scattering the grazing rust-colored steer. Instead of resembling a gigantic and vicious rottweiler or pitbull like Cerberus and the swamp monster, this hound looked more like large running shag carpet with two sets of eyes. It was truly an odd sight as Geryon with his mismatched parts and the hound greeted one another.

"Yes, yes, Orthrus!" Geryon laughed while scratching the happy hellhound behind all four of his ears, "I missed you as well. Eurytion must be ignoring you again. I just hope he isn't defiling any of the cattle again!"

To his human guests, Geryon remarked, "As you can see, Orthrus isn't much of a guard dog. I was a bit of a laughing stock for taking the two-headed, shaggy, happy-tempered runt of that litter when none of the gods wanted him. And he was no match for Hercules, sadly. Nor had he, a simple beast, committed any crime that would warrant being trapped here with me. But at my sham of a trial he would not be persuaded to stay behind. You'll find no greater loyalty than in a dog, even a two-headed one the size of an elephant."

* * *

"How exactly did you end up, ah... imprisoned here?" asked Milah as they dined in a large hall in a palatial estate that reminded of the buildings along the warm southern coast where humans used to have annual balls with the merfolk before the war with King Poseidon IV.

"Like most of my kind from my age," sighed Geryon who sat on his haunches, awkwardly holding a goblet in a paw. "I got in the way of Zeus being Zeus. You see, he discovered after my settling in the mortal realm of Erytheia that I had domesticated quite a magnificent breed of cattle. Personally, I think he wanted to bring them to Olympus just have sex with the cows to see what kind of weird offspring he could produce, perhaps some half-sister to marry Hercules off to. It was back in his youth. Let me tell you, this degenerate Caligula down here from your Land Without Magic who dabbled enough in magic to get his soul bound is tame compared to the things Zeus got up to back then.

"But I digress," continued the former half-giant. "Things took a turn. Hercules' mother died and Zeus had to care for him after being a deadbeat dad up until the kid started growing public hair. They took a camping trip. Hiked across a dessert until Zeus got tired of that and chariot-jacked Helios. Like all deadbeat dads trying to get in good with their teenage sons, he then gave the chariot to Hercules. And like all teenage sons with a new ride, he took it out without permission.

"I'm sure it was no coincidence that Hercules ended up at Red Island, my abode. Truly beautiful at sunset!" sighed Geryon. "I was just fetching some wine to have with my diner to watch the beautiful scene when I heard a yelp! I rushed out to the balcony to see Hercules bashing my poor Orthrus with a massive olive-wood club that only a child with godlike strength could wield! I realized then that the whispering amoungst my neighbors that Athena had been seen some months before snooping around my estate and inquiring about the cattle were true. But sending a boy? That surprised me. Even one vicious enough to murder a dog!"

Shaking his head, Geryon explained sadly, "My friend Eurytion was first to rush toward the scene. He was my herdsman, not the sleazy Centaur of the same name that Zeus sent to fill that role here as a constant annoyance. I'd not mind at all if Hercules showed up and bashed his skull in. Alas, it was my friend, the first human I met in Erytheia, a man I owed much for helping me to adjust to a mortal life in a strange land, whom Hercules murdered so senselessly."

"He killed your dog and your employee to steal your cattle?" asked Neal, rather disturbed that this was the boy Snow White had a crush on and "helped" get to Mt. Olympus.

"The boy has a pathological need to please his daddy," scowled Geryon. "I'm sure Zeus told him all kinds of horrific lies about me and bewitched the chariot to bring him to my island. As I said, he was interested in my cattle. Hercules probably thought he was killing monsters and would prove what a good son he was by bringing home a prized bull or some such nonsense."

Shaking his head, Geryon continued his story, "So I sprang into action and pursued the boy to take my revenge for my two friends. I don't regret trying to avenge them, only that I underestimated the boy. I should have headed the warnings Menoites and Callirrhoe bid me, concern that the immortal magic of my giant blood would prove no match for the magic of Mt. Olympus, particularly in a mortal realm. Whatever the boy was, with Athena having been about, I'd stand no chance against him. But I was filled with anger and grief. My neighbors were right, of course. Athena shielded him with her magic and Artemis had given Hercules arrows dipped in the venomous blood of the Lernaean Hydra. The little shit shot me right in the forehead! And here I ended up. All for trying to avenge the senseless, duplicitous murder my friends by a clueless boy trying to please his greedy bastard of a father. And as for my cattle? Whatever sick plans he originally had for the one his son took, Zeus claimed them all and had his brat _sacrifice them_ to Hera in what I assume was one of his many failed attempts to ingratiate his half-mortal lovechild to her.

"So that's my tragic tale," concluded the former king. "I died because Zeus couldn't keep his dick in his pants and the Olympians don't believe in divorce."

"That's awful," grimaced Milah.

Neal pointed out. "I essentially died because you couldn't keep other dicks out of your pants and didn't believe in divorce. If you had been watching me instead of arguing with Papa about what a coward he was and how much you hated him, I wouldn't have wandered off and got fatally bitten by a viper, leading to a very long and mostly fucked up and unhappy magical stay of expiration."

"Yes, well," Milah harumphed, "I _did_ tell you not to play with snakes, Baelfire!"

"Yeah, that's a great excuse. I was like five. I ended up tortured by my own grandfather, Mother!"

"Ah, grandfathers," sighed Geryon. "Mine didn't even care that I was marked for death. Poseidon did not even try to stand up on my behalf when Zeus dispatched Athena to ensure my demise. Goddess of Wisdom my scaly ass! She's the fraud if you ask me!" she spat before picking up what might have been an ostrich leg.

"Speaking of frauds," Geryon remarked, "on a clear day from the highest tower you can see the Ten Stony Ditches. And if the wind is blowing from the desert, you can even hear the screams of panderers, seducers, flatterers, and various so-called holymen who conned peasants out of their money and goods on the promise of getting them into Paradise. Can't hear the false prophets and corrupt politicians, but who would want to listen to their inane ramblings anyway? Just as bad the evil councilors and advisers. Frankly, I don't think the hypocrites, thieves, and counterfeits deserve such harsh punishments given all of the hypocrisy, thievery, and falsifying of destiny itself that the gods get up to. To say nothing of the seducers. But that's the screwed up narcissism that shaped this place from a perfectly fine hellscape of frozen wastelands and burning waterfalls into some weird, allegorical attempt at manifesting sins."

"So... you're a short flight from the center of Tartarus," Merlin deduced.

"Oh, if one _could_ venture there as the crow flies," Geryon shook his head. "The only way I know to get there is to be sent directly by Zeus. It's surrounded by doors."

"Naturally," groaned Neal.

Merlin cleared his throat then and asked, "Holding off on Prometheus then, it seems we should commence with apprehending Prince James and Sir Gaston. If they were not in the Howling Plains or the Ice Swamp, then they must have returned to one of the realms surrounding your estate. Is there any way to track them?"

"Oh, indeed. Orthrus has their scent. He might well take exception and set aside his usual cheerful demeanor to rip their magically manifested bodies to shreds," nodded Geryon and he directed at the massive dog lounging beside the table like an old Clifford cartoon. "Would you like that, Orthrus? Ripping apart the sadistic humans who trespassed in our home?"

Orthrus raised his heads and yapped in apparent agreement.

Even Neal, who was generally opposed to violence, particularly for outright revenge, couldn't really find an argument against letting the giant sheep dog turn the two dead men into chew toys. Clearly, James and Gaston were a couple of sadistic psychopaths who'd made it their mission in death to track and torture all of Tartarus' monsters. Maybe they thought it would draw the attention of Zeus and get them a means to escape. Maybe they were really just a couple of sick fucks.

* * *

AN: Why so afraid of doors? If you've seen _Lucifer_ , you'll have an idea. But poor Geryon, right? I mean, dude, in every version of his story, it really sounds like the guy got set up. Sure, he's sometimes portrayed as a Greek version of the Hindu goddess Kali with crazy arms and legs and weapons. But he's only using them to defend his rightful property and friends from theft and murder. The guy is just chilling at his ranch, causing no harm to anyone. Sure, he has some giant blood, but he was cool with a self-imposed exile to a mortal land. He even brought civilization and government to that backwater where he was being a good king, raising cattle, hanging out with Cerberus' less scary litter-mate and his herdsman buddy. For all we know, he had a _Brokeback Mountain_ thing going before Hercules/Heracles up and murders his dog, his friend, and steals his cattle like the he was playing #CountrySongAGreekMyth. The poor guy's grandpa, Zeus' own brother, won't even stand up for him. And does anyone even make use of his cattle? No! They're _sacrificed_ to Hera while he gets sent to Tartarus and transformed into a monster! I'd say it's hard to get more tragic than that and Geryon deserves some justice!

Next up: A couple of psychos in Hell.


	13. Unnatural Born Killers

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note: This story's present takes place concurrently with the battle against The Sorcerer's Apprentice in Storybrooke in "The Outstanding Balance of Morality".**

 **Warning: Spoilers for "Murder Most Predictable"... I mean "Fowl".**

* * *

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

UNNATURAL BORN KILLERS

Inhuman screams came from a stony pit behind him as the late Prince James stood in contemplation of a volcanic eruption in the distance. The geography of Tartarus really was more absurdly pieced together than Wonderland, no physical laws determining the proximity of anything, be it forests and deserts or waterfalls of fire that spilled into rivers of ice. Or the strange monsters that roamed the expanse, stranger than the chimera, manticore, and sphinx that he'd slain back home in life.

Tartarus was full of creatures more terrifying and difficult to take down than anything back in The Enchanted Forest. James was sure he'd put Odysseus to shame in how he'd dealt with the Cyclopes. And even that wussy little brat Hercules needed help dealing with those hundred-armed and fifty-headed Hecatonchires that had been turned from prisoners into guards after that war between the Titans and the gods. Though, really, the more humanoid and dimwitted monsters were Gaston's preference while James found the most pleasure taking down the more clever creatures akin to the ones he'd hunted to gain his reputation as a monster slayer.

Another scream drew James' attention back to the pit. He was letting Gaston have his fun. The younger man was a bit of a sadist who enjoyed torture more than killing. Frankly, James didn't see the point in the messiness of tormenting some creature you were just going to kill in the end. Even his father, ever the tyrant, had only ever used torture in attempts to draw out information about his enemies, not for kicks or convoluted marriage and property acquisition plots.

But then he'd always been told that there was a increased incidence of madness in Avonlea attributed to the run-off in the mountain streams from the Great Dwarf Mines, the caverns from which enchantable metals were mined during wars between Giants and Fairies with their less intelligent Ogre, Troll, and Dwarf minions. The families with ancestral lands closest to those streams seemed to be the most afflicted, at least according to one of his mistresses from the region, and along with the recurrent Ogre problem, it kept the people there fairly isolated from outside trade. And marriage. And, of course, conquest. Even if there might still be some veins of metal ore deep in the mountains, it was less perilous to steal from Giants than deal with the risk of acquiring the same magical madness as the residents while fighting off the Ogres that lived in the mines and were also, apparently, far more brutish and unpredictable.

That described Gaston in his less civil moments, James mused. But it wasn't exactly the lunatic's fault that he acted like that third cousin of George's who'd been dropped on the head as a baby and spent his time in the castle garden smashing beetles for no reason... and thus his father's desperate need to manufacture a legitimate heir and keep his internal enemies or opportunistic villains like the Evil Queen from usurping his throne. So, really, the downfall of his kingdom was due to some wet nurse dropping a baby. If that wench had done her job right, King Albert would have been named the heir and perhaps James would have grown up on that farm with his brother... or maybe he'd have ended up sold into slavery like that Liam fellow and his brother, though it did seem more likely that if George wasn't preoccupied for years trying to produce and heir he might have spent a bit more time using his authority to arrest small town racketeering rings like Bo Peep's who bankrupted farmers to build their own little fiefdoms.

James could have lived a simple, happy life as a child without brutal expectations and responsibilities. Then he could have formed his own racketeering ring. Probably, his brother who have needed to suffer some terrible accident, but everyone had been so gullible regarding his biological father's death, that would have been fairly simple. He could have even switched places with David, gained his parents' love. Oh, it would have been wonderful!

But that was not the path fate and the gods had bestowed upon James. Whether a more nurturing family would have curbed his tendencies could never be known. He was not even truly sure how envious he was of his brother's upbringing and how much of those violent, vindictive feelings were due to what a curse had made him. It didn't matter now, of course. James had taken a gamble and lost, though there was never going to be a happy outcome for him.

Another howl of pain and James' patience wore out.

"Haven't you had enough of that yet?" he snarled at the other man. "It's not as though we're going to flay her and bake her like a trout!"

Down in the pit, Gaston stepped back from the whimpering and some-scales-removed she-dragon they'd tied down with the chains long ago used to contain the Cyclopes.

"The flaying would be quit exciting!" whined the Avonlean nobleman.

James sighed at that. Maybe it would, but they had limitations best not tested and he didn't want to make a foolish mistake here. Kampe was one of the more fearsome chimera-like humanoid creatures here. With the face and upper body of a woman, lower body and wings of a dragon, and tail of a scorpion, she was beautiful and deadly. And ancient. James didn't know her origin despite his study of "mythical" beasts and though Gaston had learned a great deal from listening to his former fiancée prattle on about her beloved books, he as well had no insight into Kampe other than she was one of the earliest _living_ beasts placed in Tartarus by the Titans as a guard during its construction.

Not that her beginnings mattered. Her eternity, whether in service or imprisonment, was surely no fun since Zeus took over. She was still fearsome and dangerous, but there was a pathetic-ness about the she-dragon that almost made James feel bad for Gaston's torturing. Almost. James was _evil_ after all. Mostly he was just annoyed that his companion was taking his sweet time and the ash cloud was drifting this way with its sulfuric fumes.

"And with what are you planning to flay this beast?" James scoffed. "I doubt the two of us together could pick up one of the Hecatonchires' blades. I don't have my rightful enchanted sword, as you'll recall. My bastard of a brother took it along with my kingdom!"

Now it was Gaston who rolled his eyes while picking up one of the viper heads he had severed from the pet serpents Kampe used to wear around her reptilian ankles. "Calypso's cunt, do you ever shut about that, Jamie?" he complained while merrily affixing it to the restrained she-dragon's belt of animal skulls.

"You were already dead of being an arrogant fool," Gaston reminded, "by letting that half-troll monstrosity stab you through your liver. Is it unfortunate that you turned out to have a surviving twin that you only learned about after you perished? Of course. Who would even consider an Evil Twin having a counterpart that had survived let alone a mother alive to get shot dead by your dear adoptive father's goons, but not before passing on her 'gypsy' charm to your less overtly afflicted brother so he could impregnate an exiled Queen Regent who was able to bring to term a spawn of True Love who thanks to a shady savior-making spell and that charm magically merged with her less savior-y half in the womb until the half-sister of your adoptive father's evil-cleavaged ally cursed her well and good enough to let her not-so-good twin take over, become the Dark One, turn a pirate into another Dark One, kill her pirate lover Dark One, and drag her family to The Underworld to rescue him, resulting in your goody-goody twin tossing your sorry ass in the River of Lost Souls because you trusted the god who, it turned out, wanted to bang the aforementioned half-sister.

"As if you were ever going to end up somewhere better," Gaston scoffed. "You wouldn't have taken Hades' deal otherwise. Even if you'd bested wee little David, he'd have gone to fertile fields of paradise and you'd still have ended up here when Hades' coupe failed... or if he'd succeeded, he would have stabbed you in the back just like he did his own 'true love' who restarted his heart. The gods are far more self-absorbed and cruel than either of us."

"First of all," James corrected, "I knew about my twin brother well before I died. I conspired with my adoptive father to take out my birth father who was raising up a stink about getting me back and could have sent our whole kingdom to ruin if it had gotten out I had no blood claim to the throne. And I put on quite a convincing act too. I swear, as a child I looked like one of those big-eyed children in those paintings at Granny's. Very easy to fool people when you're that adorable."

"You helped get your old man murdered? Cold, man!" laughed Gaston and James shrugged.

"I did what had to be done for the kingdom. And securing my place on the throne. I have to admit, it's rather amusing that instead of the guardsman it ended up being the pirate who would marry my evil niece who offed old Robert," mused James. "I might not have lived to produce any surviving heirs and regrettably sired more than few bastards that had to be put down, but it does warm the cockles of my blackened heart that my curse does live on to torment my dear brother."

After a pause, James continued, "And _second of all_ , you took the same deal."

"I'm a little bit mad," shrugged Gaston. "If not by birth or drinking tainted well water, then certainly from my time as a withering rose. Have you ever been transfigured into a rose and unknowingly dismembered bit by bit by your former fiancée who thought she was trimming your stem to preserve your bloom? Never mind she kept putting some potion in the water that burned my wounds like acid! I was begging for the sweet relief of death by the time the Dark One finally allowed me to perish. And that little bitch had the nerve to still get high and mighty about what I did to an Ogre to try and wake up her foolish town to the threat. But then, I suppose, her mother getting eaten by one wasn't warning enough!"

James rolled his eyes. "You're the one who went gold-digging for a madwoman from a line of madwomen, my friend. And I doubt your tree is free of rot."

"Better a psychopath by metal poisoning than by a curse," Gaston argued with a shrug. "One can be cured with a price paid in gold. The other takes magic and that's never worth the compound interest."

"I'd rather pay it than go to some shady clinic in Oz," scoffed James. "And you realize that monkey man was a huckster. Doc the Dwarf probably knows more actual medicine than that 'wizard'."

Gaston rolled his eyes. "All right, fine, perhaps he would have been a shifty choice. But those people from Storybrooke that Hades' dumb bitch lover killed at their healing center while stealing a baby to travel through time said that world's got cures for some metal poisoning. Perhaps if I'd lived to be cursed instead of turned into a flower and compost, I'd have been cured of my utter lack of empathy and heinous cruelty and won Belle's heart with honor!"

Gaston paused and then both men burst out laughing at the absurdity of that notion.

"Right," snorted David. "Well, you're dead now with a heart blackened by all your heinous crimes. As you said, Hades or no Hades, the gods hardly care if metal building up in your brain made you torture animals as a small child. It's your story. This is your fate. Fair or not."

"And I am making the most of it!" huffed Gaston, holding the blade of his sword over an open flame. "So quit trying to hurry me up! We've got eternity here!"

"We've also got a volcanic eruption. And do you want to find out if the ash is accompanied by a river of lava? I say we leave this creature, get to higher ground, then come back tomorrow and see if she's been turned into a lovely magma statue."

Gaston sighed and looked toward the darkening sky. "I suppose."

Turning to Kampe, he crooned, "What do you think of being drown in a pit of liquid fire, mademoiselle?"

Kampe let out a growl and struggled against her chains.

James uttered, "She's not very conversational for having such lovely lips, is she?"

In response to that the she-dragon hissed, "I will shred you both into tiny strips and throw you through the deepest doors in Tartarus where the souls you have wronged will kill and dismember you for eternity!"

"And how are you going to shred us, mademoiselle, when you cannot free yourself?" Gaston taunted.

"Others have escaped you!" Kampe growled.

"We were unprepared to deal with the undead, I will grant you that," James conceded, "but you're very much alive, rather something of an anomaly down here. I do wonder what killing you will do to the magic here?"

"Maybe killing shouldn't be an everyday thing. Maybe it should be _harder_ for the good guys," uttered Gaston as he grabbed the makeshift rope to climb out and earning a curious look from James. "Oh, just something Belle said once after reading one of her silly books and commenting on the war. And perhaps it should be. But we aren't the good guys."

James returned a smirking grin - just before pain flared in his back. He stumbled forward as there was a _pffft_ sound and Gaston was struck in the upper chest, propelled back over the edge of the pit. As he heard his companion land with a thud, James turned and drew his sword, ready to flay whatever pathetic soul had given him a new blemish only to stumble a bit when he discover the person with another arrow trained on him was a old woman with gray hair and wads of something stuck up her nose. She was vaguely familiar, but he couldn't quite place her.

"You think an arrow in my back is going to take me down, you old bat?" James scoffed and ignored the burning pain in his side as he rushed the old bitch.

He only got two steps, however, before his hand and knees went slack and he slumped to the ground unable to move.

"You silly boys," the old woman tutted, coming to stand over James. "I suppose you were saving the Lernaean Hydra for last. I'm sure you've heard it not only has poisonous breath but blood so virulent that even its scent is deadly. Of course, less deadly to the already dead since Hercules sent it here with a sword forged in the River of Fire. More like Squid Ink for the soul... that'll turn you into something _particularly_ unpleasant."

Still smirking, the old woman shouldered her bow and climbed into the pit. The she-dragon eyed her warily as she retrieved a key from around a paralyzed Gaston's neck.

"You've had your fun, son," she told him while unchaining the she-dragon. "I hope it's enough to sustain you for eternity. Yours isn't going to be bluebirds and rainbows."

Kampe stretched her wings and addressed the human. "I owe you a great debt. But why would you help me?"

"It's what the good guys do," the old woman answered and amended, "And truth be told, I wasn't always a sweet old lady, or I wouldn't have ended up in The Underworld that far down on the trial list. I tried to make up for some of my rabblerousing with my youngest sister's girl, but seems you can't wipe your slate entirely clean in life. You have to face the music for your crimes when it's over, prove that you learned those lessons before you can move on. I just figured I'd be moving on eventually to Elyssium, not used as a prop by Hades and spat out of that acid green river down here. I was a bit of a troublemaker, but this is definitely not my final resting place. And something tells me it was not meant to be yours either."

"Tartarus was meant to be a prison," returned Kampe, "but only for the worst immortals, predominately the insane. Those who could not control their monstrous forms any longer and indiscriminately slaughtered others, immortal and mortal alike. Each was meant to have their own prison to contain and control them. But Zeus changed the plans, altered the punishments, made it a vast torture chamber for mortals, some who deserved it - some who do not.

"And here," she sighed, "he also trapped those who had served his grandparents, who minded the mad monsters to protect others. We sacrificed much for the well-being of others. But all he perceived was loyalty to his enemy. He freed the insane monsters I contained, restored them to life, and when he could not tame them in Olympus after his victory, he returned them here, but with free reign to do as they pleased... which has included hunting me tirelessly."

With a growl, Kampe concluded, "More the fool am I to have eluded them for so long only to be trapped by two insane _mortals_."

"From what I understand," the bow-wielding woman replied, "they pulled one over on quite a few respectable persons and creatures in life and death. And who expects a sadist and a psychopath to be tossed down here without being assigned a cellblock? Hades got sloppy when he thought he'd won. Everyone was collateral damage. Seems it might be the same with his brother, though. Lots of rumors circulating about the currents and tides in the rivers shifting, more eruptions than usual. Magic being out of sorts. Even that Death himself was slain."

"If Thanatos is dead, then magic is in flux," mused Kampe and she looked to the paralyzed mortals. "But not enough to save them from their final _just_ resting place," she hissed and scooped both up in her claws.

To the old woman she offered, "I will fly you clear of the lava field and signal Davy Jones. Perhaps he can take you to the wayland between Tartarus and The Underworld and you can find passage back to face your own justice. No mortal soul sane of mind should be sentenced here without trial."

* * *

AN: Anyone catch the _Game of Thrones_ reference? Have you figured out who the old woman is? Should Kampe hook up with Geryon? I mean, really, two half-beast people living in Taratus and they haven't knocked... whatever they have? Seems just wrong! As for James and Gaston, agree or disagree with my characterization? I see James as a blood-thirsty and empathy-lacking braggart who likes killing things for sport like a big game hunter while Gaston is a pure sadist who takes pleasure in causing pain to non-human creatures. Here, James turned out that way because he is an "Evil Twin" and a blood curse on his family line caused all of his good potential to be destroyed before he was born and prevents him from changing/learning how to be good in spite of his disadvantaged beginning. Gaston, I decided to amplify his evil behavior with a metal poisoning plot device and had it insinuated that Belle and her mother's line also suffer from this Avonlea Madness... but Belle doesn't remember that her mother was crazy or that she had the potential to become crazy either because the blow to her head when her mother was killed caused her to forget that as well, or because her father, when she was unconscious from that head injury, had some magic done to give her only good memories of her mother and forget her own possible fate so she could live a carefree life and maybe be able to follow her dreams of traveling the world. I don't really like Maurice/Moe, but I wanted to give him a justification for trying to erase Belle's memories in Season 2... that perhaps he'd noticed she was now exhibiting crazy behavior like her mother and thought if she left Storybrooke, away from magic, and forgot everything she might be able to live a sane and happy life. Assuming I get back to "The Outstanding Balance of Morality" after this story, Belle's diagnosis and her attempts to recover and regain respect in the community will be covered. She's a bit like Emma, essentially becoming someone else without anyone knowing why she was behaving differently and making selfish and nonsensical choices, but also like Snow in that she lived her life idolizing a false narrative about her mother, trying to be more prefect than she needed to be and in doing so making terrible mistakes.

"Maybe killing shouldn't be an everyday thing. Maybe it should be _harder_ for the good guys.." - Rufus, _Timeless_


	14. Beowolf

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note: This story's present takes place concurrently with the battle against The Sorcerer's Apprentice in Storybrooke in "The Outstanding Balance of Morality".**

 **Game of Thrones Note: The GoT reference is the brain-damaged cousin smashing beetles. Tyrion and Jaime recall him during their "family murdering" talk before Tyrion's trial. But thanks for playing!**

 **SPOILER WARNING: This chapter contains major spoilers for 6.13 "Ill-Boding Patterns". Much as I absolutely loath how it retconned Baelfire's character from a canon standpoint, it actually works quite well with this chapter, which I had been putting off, unable to quite figure out how to write it until this piece of filth aired. This chapter also contains spoilers for the mid-season finale of** _ **Lucifer**_ **"A Good Day To Die" that, contrastly, was quite brilliant!**

 **Chapter Disclaimer: I don't own** _ **Lucifer**_ **. A portion of the dialogue in this chapter is taken from "A Good Day To Die" and is used with love.**

* * *

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

BEOWULF

It all happened so fast. They had converged with "Auntie Em" of all the Lost Souls who'd brought along a limp James and Gaston with her own beastly companion. They were explaining the current crisis in lands above to Kampe, hoping she might help in gathering exiles for an attempt to escape and take down Zeus when the two villains somehow managed to escape.

They'd given chase and somewhere in the woods Neal found himself bleeding from a wound in his side and James snarling as he transformed into a beast himself. There was a scuffle, lots of shouting, and the next thing Neal knew he standing in a less darkened wood watching a child version of himself, older than Neal could remember being in The Enchanted Forest, holding the Dark One's dagger in his hand.

 _"Dark One. Stop him. Do it. Kill him!"_ the teenage Baelfire snapped.

And with that there was another snap and Neal turned to see Beowulf fall lip to the ground, head at an unnatural angle while Rumplestiltkskin took over him with a pained expression on his reptilian face.

"I know," a voice intoned and Neal spun once more, this time to face the man he'd just watched die. "It's a lot to take in, isn't it?"

"I don't... I-I don't understand," Neal uttered and his voice as different. So was he. He was the boy. "I wasn't there. I found the sword. I was just a kid, barely fourteen-"

"The lies father's tell their children to protect them," Beowulf cut him off. "You didn't find my sword, boy, you took it as a trophy after you ordered him using his own accursed weapon to cut me down. But you don't remember that, do you? Not up here," he tapped his head, "but it's still in here," he reached out and thumped Neal's chest, amending, "Well, not literally at the moment. Your heart's elsewhere seeing as you're dead, but your soul still carries the stain or you wouldn't be here now. Can't cleanse yourself of that you don't remember doing, now can you?"

Neal looked down and found himself now gripping the dagger. "What...?"

"I don't deserve to be here," Beowulf snarled, "but you do. You think it's that easy to let go? Think again, boy,"

The more Neal tried to let go, the tighter his fingers curled around the hilt and he heard whispering in his head, the voices telling him to kill, that this was right, that this was the only way to protect his father and himself and bring peace to the land. "No. No, no, no, no, no, no, what's happening? What's happening?" he cried.

"You just can't help yourself, can you?" Beowulf taunted and Neal whimpered, compelled to move forward.

"You have to believe me, I didn't want this!" Neal exclaimed in horror.

"And yet... once upon a time, _you did_."

Neal lunged forward, the blade burying deep in the other man's chest .

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry," Neal gasped as he stepped back only to shove the blade in again. "I can't make it stop!""

"It?" Beowulf scoffed. "As if you had no part in it."

"I don't! I didn't. I-I don't want this!" Neal shouted, horrified.

Beowulf laughed. "Look at you. So pitiful. Stuck in a Hell even worse than the one you once ruled. the one you thought you were saving others from. Trapped by your own guilt." he scoffed.

"And while we're pointing out how lame you are," Beowulf continued, "you didn't even follow through on your own. Sad, pathetic little boy had to use his daddy and dark magic to take care of the big bad coward."

"No!" Neal cried as the blade dug deep again and with it memories came rushing back, memories that had vanished when he drank that tea. The person he'd become after setting out to save everyone from Beowulf's lies

"Oh, Bae, Bae, Bae. You should know better than to think you'd escaped the scourge of your lineage. It's all about patterns, _ill-boding patterns_ , predicting the future."

"What... what future?" Neal stammered.

How should I know? You're the one who has to figure that out, aren't you? After all, I'm just in your head. I'm just a manifestation of your own guilty conscience. Speaking of..."

Neal whimpered as his hand began to move again and Beowulf smiled.

"I hope you didn't leave any unfinished business up on Mt. Olympus..."

"What?"

"...'cause you're never getting out of here."

* * *

"He's stuck," Kampe deduced after they had recaptured the criminals. "Trapped in one of those cells."

"Perhaps that was Zeus' plan all along," Geryon considered. "Send his Lord of The Underworld here to apprehend his predecessor's hired goons who would ensure he find himself trapped here forever. Now he cannot cause trouble on Mt. Olympus now.

"But... but how can he even be trapped?" Milah asked. "My son was a good man. He made some mistakes, but nothing so terrible he couldn't escape it. He made amends with those he left behind."

"Actually," Nimue interjected, "there is one thing. Your son did something terrible as a boy. He used the Dark One's dagger to order his father to murder a man. A morally questionable man who had betrayed his troops, but it was a cold-blooded act non-the-less, and one for which he felt no regret."

"That... that's not possible!" Milah exclaimed in shock.

"Many things are possible with enchanted weapons and dark magic," Nimue corrected, holding up Excalibur. "It was not the boy's true intention, but he was susceptible to the dagger's thrall, like his father, probably due to his fairy blood and by using it, he deepened the demon's hold on Rumplestiltskin and darkened his own heart. But his father gave him a potion to forget, and so he could not cleanse that darkness in The Underworld. He would have been trapped there forever, wondering why? So Zeus gave him a reason to stay without wondering and then got Baelfire to volunteer to come here, unaware of how vulnerable he was to its traps and now unable to warn his lover that she is being conned. Dark magic corrupts often in the most tragic ways."

"Indeed," Merlin nodded. "I started all of this by trying to avoid dealing with the consequences of drinking from that grail. I doomed you and so many others."

"A man often meets his destiny on very road he takes to avoid it," Geryon spoke up. "Each one of us spent our lives running from our truths until they caught up with us. I served a cruel king. I thought by being a better one myself in another land I could absolve myself of the many souls that were lost, some trapped him, some utterly destroyed by weapons never meant to be used even by immortals. For my folly, my closest companions were brutally killed, my kingdom left in ruin, its people left starving, and even then when I could not accept, face accountability for what I had done, I became this... _thing_."

The others could not deny what the half-Titan king said. It was true. Each of them had not wanted to face the challenges before them in life. And by running from those things, either physically or with magic, they'd hurt those they loved the most both in life and in death.

"You are right, Geryon," Kampe nodded. "None of us is innocent. But few are. Even the gods are imperfect, some more terrible than any of us. We have done terrible things in moments of weakness. Fear and dark magic corrupt the soul and blacken the heart, lead beings to do things that are against their nature. It is not wrong to face punishment for those things, for we made the choices to wield it knowing the dangers, but it is wrong that we should rot here, unable to cleanse our souls as others may simply because the gods decree that we not be given that chance, that our actions, our deaths, our _imprisonment_ aids a greater purpose that serves them."

Milah deduced, "You think Beowulf was placed in my son's path to ensure his father couldn't be saved, couldn't end this scourge."

"He did carry a mysterious weapon that could kill many by striking down one, that ended up in the hands of the Black Fairy," Nimue answered. "Rumplestilskin long suspected his mother had absconded with it but was unsure of her use for it. I think it was merely a test. She lived in a realm outside of time. If she could corrupt Baelfire, the she could corrupt another of her line to wield that blade against the savior who would, rather ironically, be the mother of Baelfire's child... or at least trapped within the shell of her sister who could be separated from her with it... but probably not for any benevolent purpose."

"I won't let my son suffer for a crime put upon him by that bitch," Milah snarled. "I'm getting him out. And then we're taking all of these manipulative immortals down."

"You're sure?" Nimue asked, a hand on her arm. "You have not been keen on taking on the gods. To thwart Zeus' plan in such a way will not go unnoticed. And what you find beyond the door will not be pleasant."

Milah squared her shoulders. "Yes, I have a paralyzing fear of the place. But I would face a thousand Hells to save my son. I failed him in life. I will not fail him in death."

* * *

Beowulf grunted as the blade went in once more.

Neal was sobbing.

"I-I know. I know. Hurts you more than it does me," the faux dead warrior crooned.

"Please, please, forgive me!" Neal wept. "I didn't think I had a choice. Everyone would have turned on me and my father and he would have done terrible things!"

"He still did terrible things," Beowulf reminded. "The only difference is that you became complicit in those things. You took away his free will, offered him to the voices, to the magic, the _Darkness_ with no fight. And all it takes is a single moment for that war to be lost."

"No!" Neal cried. "I'm sorry. I didn't know what would happen. I-I didn't understand!"

"But you felt the darkness when you held the dagger, when thoughts of murder filled your heart," Beowulf argued as again he was stabbed. "And the Darkness answered your desire and you didn't even try to fight-"

"No!" a voice yelled and Neal turned, panting, looking toward his mother.

"Mom? W-what are you doing here?"

"I'm your rescue party of one. You don't belong here," Milah stated.

"But look. Look what I've done!" Neal cried.

"Baelfire, this man isn't real," Milah reminded him. "He's just a part of your Hell."

"But-"

"No," Milah cut him off. "You were... you were just trying to save innocent people and you were seduced by powerful dark magic. This isn't your fault. The plot was probably your grandmother's. But that it worked. That's mine. I am to blame for all of this. Ever since... ever since your father returned from the war I tried to stoke your anger at the situation you were in and turn it against your father in the hopes of using you against him. But... but I just made things worse. I pushed you away. And then I left you with thoughts of terrible things done to me in a land on the verge of another war even worse than before. I left you to watch your friends go off to die and your father alone to save you from being killed like them instead of taking you away with me.

"I wanted to be free of that life," Milah concluded with regret, "and so I left you. And now look at us. Stuck in this prison while worlds are dying, while the woman you sacrificed selflessly for is unknowingly walking to a pointless death."

"Emma..." Neal blinked as if being lifted out of a trance and he wasn't a boy anymore, his hands now free of blood and that damned dagger. "I have to save Emma!"

Neal turned toward the door that had no place being in the middle of the forest, moving forward, but alone. "Mom?" He turned back and Beowulf was gone, replaced again by his father, but younger and human and an even younger version of himself fiddling with his old silver claps and smiling a chirpily, "Mama! You're back!"

"Yes," she smiled at him ."We can be a happy family. I've missed you so much,"

"Mother!" Neal called again. "Mom? Mom. Mom! Come on. You pulled me out of my guilt, there's no time to get stuck in yours. You know this won't turn out well! Come on. Come on!"

"Please, don't abandon me. Not again!" the little boy cried.

"No... No. Baelfire," she hugged the boy. "I would never abandon you again. Shh. My sweet boy!"

"He's not real. Mom!" Neal shouted, physically grabbing her and pulling her toward the door. "Please. Mom. Mom. Mom: He's not your son!" he tried to argue with her as she fought, even as his heart broke for her reaching out to that little boy who wasn't him, but could have been.

* * *

"I'm sorry I fell apart there," Milah sighed as Neal sat down beside her on a mossy fallen tree.

"Well, it was never real, was it?"

"Baelfire, I am so sorry," Milah insisted.

"My life was forfeit to set my father on a path," Neal considered. "Was putting Emma in my path part of that too? It feels like the whole thing's been a sham, Mom. Long con. And I fell for it."

"You can't blame yourself. This is all Zeus' doing. And He should be punished for it."

"Oh, I plan on that," Neal growled. "I mean, how can I trust anything, anyone, now that I know these damn gods might be behind it all? How can I know what was real in my life? And what if there are other things I've forgotten?"

"I don't know, but you can trust me."

"Can I, Mom? Cause I don't know," Neal shot back. "There's a lot wrong with Papa, but at least he never pretended he loved me more than he power and the freedom it gave him." He grimaced, amending, "At least not after that day, not after he couldn't fight it anymore. So how do I know you weren't working for Hades or Zeus like James and Gaston, that you weren't sent here to wait for me and help keep me from warning Emma?"

"I made mistakes," Milah conceded. "I chose freedom and the power I thought that other life gave me. But it was all lies filled with shame and regret. I _do_ love you, Baelfire. Would I have gone through that door to find you if I didn't? Doesn't that count for anything?"

"I don't know," Neal sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "I don't even know who I am anymore. All I know is that I refuse to be caught in the middle of some stupid power play between the gods any longer. I am tired of being a pawn."

"We all are," Milah nodded. "And I don't expect your forgiveness, son. I never did. But don't doubt who you are based on that one moment in your life and the path you could have taken if your father hadn't taken it from you. Your life was tragic and painful, but you lived it more selflessly than most even carrying a darkness you didn't know was there. Whoever or whatever you _could_ have become when it found its way into you and twisted you into someone who would deepen its hold on your father, you didn't. The taint on your _soul_ might have remained enough to trap you here, but your heart, I don't believe it carried that darkness forever, not when you fought so hard to free your father. When you fought for your family and gave up your life, your happiness for their safety."

She shook her head and insisted, "You faced the bad thing that you did. You can't change that or the choices others made because of it. But you can keep bad people from tempting others into embracing the worst part of themselves that we all carry inside of us, from letting it consume them and continue this cycle our world has been trapped in for generations. Because _that_ is the _best_ part of yourself, Baelfire. That's the part of _you_ that you have always listened to."

"I still killed a man," Neal argued.

"I've killed many men," Milah sadly told him, "and women. And many were good, innocent people that I killed for far less well-intended reasons than what you did even following the desires of an ancient evil. Sometimes just... to watch them die and laugh at them for staying imprisoned in the life I had escaped. I did all of that without any threat to those I cared for or a dark enchanted weapon drawing on my weaknesses."

"Which doesn't entirely excuse it," Neal sighed, "though maybe... on some subconscious level explains why I wanted so badly to destroy magic when I was a kid, when I got to that other world."

"Perhaps," Milah agreed. "And you will carry that guilt to whatever comes after we kick Zeus' ass across the Styx. But don't let it imprison you. Even if you didn't know what you did, I think you deserve to be free of any further punishment, if anything for time served in Neverland and the horrors you suffered there that no child, no matter what they did, should have to endure."

Milah gave his shoulder a squeeze as she stood up. "You're a good man, whatever age you are, whatever name you call yourself. Don't let the gods and their cruel manipulations make you doubt how brave and true you are, Baelfire. Don't let them turn you into something you don't want to be because you gave into a weakness long ago as a boy who didn't understand the world or the ancient evil he was up against, who was simply afraid of losing the only family he had left and desperate for the power to keep his father safe."

Neal didn't respond to that, but he did watch his mother walk over to the campfire where the others had gathered. He knew that she was right. He knew he'd been manipulated. He'd been enticed in some sort of _Lord of the Rings_ type bullshit with the dagger. But he'd still _let_ himself _not_ fight.

He felt ill over it.

Looking up at the eerie green sky devoid of stars, Neal recalled something Emma had shared during their recent and all-too-brief time together, an unburdening of her sins, the worst that she had left a woman to bleed to death in a street to escape arrest. She could blame her sister for being so reckless and callous, she'd said, but she couldn't _not_ blame herself for being so desperate for answers and terrified of going back to jail that she let that darkness win, let herself run and never turn herself in for the initial crime, let alone the considerably more sever punishment she could have faced for admitting to leaving a fatally wounded person to bleed to death without calling for an ambulance... even if that woman had told her to leave, believing her injury too severe anyway... which Emma said she'd told herself over and over for years to live with what she'd done, but she could never really know, and it would always haunt her.

Now he had his own ghost, his own bloodied hands when he'd always thought he was the good one in a family of killers. Now taking that key and using it on the Vault didn't seem so odd a thing to have done. There was already some darkness from _The Darkness_ in him, a darkness in his heart, a blemish on his soul for using the dagger to make the Dark One kill. So, of course, it would call to him, it would want him to be its sacrifice. And maybe he had deserved that.

Maybe he deserved all of the suffering in his life and after it was done.

But there were many more who didn't deserve it, who'd done nothing at all and would be wiped out of existence so that Zeus could simply start over with new worlds, new innocent people to turn into monsters.

Neal didn't know if he deserved forgiveness for killing Beowulf and making his father's fight so much harder than it already was. He doubted he would ever forgive himself. But now wasn't the time to wallow in guilt, for any of them to dwell on their crimes and what punishment they merited.

Standing up, he took a deep breath and then went to join the others. "So, we need a plan to get Prometheus."

* * *

AN: I disliked "Ill-Boding Patterns" immensely, from the garbage that having Baelfire go full Frodo like the dagger was the One Ring to having that juxtaposed with this Gideon bullshit _and_ Emma basically proposing to herself with Hook and it being framed like she's too blame in her absurd over-excitement for him continuing to lie to her. What toxic garbage! But at least the Blue Fairy continues to seem super shady.

"A man often meets his destiny on very road he takes to avoid it." - HR to Barry on a fixed future, _The Flash_


	15. Beowolf (revised version)

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note: This story's present takes place concurrently with the battle against The Sorcerer's Apprentice in Storybrooke in "The Outstanding Balance of Morality".**

 **Game of Thrones Note: The GoT reference is the brain-damaged cousin smashing beetles. Tyrion and Jaime recall him during their "family murdering" talk before Tyrion's trial. But thanks for playing!**

 **SPOILER WARNING: This chapter contains major spoilers for 6.13 "Ill-Boding Patterns". Much as I absolutely loath how it retconned Baelfire's character from a canon standpoint, it actually works quite well with this chapter, which I had been putting off, unable to quite figure out how to write it until this piece of filth aired. This chapter also contains spoilers for the mid-season finale of** _ **Lucifer**_ **"A Good Day To Die" that, contrastly, was quite brilliant!**

 **Chapter Disclaimer: I don't own** _ **Lucifer**_ **. A portion of the dialogue in this chapter is taken from "A Good Day To Die" and is used with love.**

 **CHAPTER EDIT: I edited this chapter after the Season 6 finale, not because there are any spoilers in it, but because I decided to go back to an original draft based on the events of "Ill-Boding Patterns".**

* * *

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

BEOWOLF

It all happened so fast. They had converged with "Auntie Em" of all the Lost Souls who'd brought along a limp James and Gaston with her own beastly companion. They were explaining the current crisis in lands above to Kampe, hoping she might help in gathering exiles for an attempt to escape and take down Zeus when the two villains somehow managed to escape.

They'd given chase and somewhere in the woods Neal found himself bleeding from a wound in his side and James snarling as he transformed into a beast himself. There was a scuffle, lots of shouting, and the next thing Neal knew he standing in a less darkened wood watching a child version of himself, older than Neal should have been in The Enchanted Forest, holding the Dark One's dagger in his hand.

An uneasy feeling built in his stomach, memories that weren't his but shared unwillingly by his father when they were joined. Memories he had been doing his best to avoid thinking about since the day that he died.

 _"Dark One. Stop him. Do it. Kill him!"_ the teenage Baelfire snapped as Neal tried to back up, tried to find the door that was nowhere in sight.

And with that there was another snap and Neal turned to see Beowolf fall lip to the ground, head at an unnatural angle while Rumplestiltkskin took over him with a pained expression on his reptilian face.

"I know," a voice intoned and Neal spun once more, this time to face the man he'd just watched die. "Guilt is a terrible thing, isn't it?"

"I don't... it wasn't my fault," Neal uttered and his voice as different. So was he. He was the boy. "The dagger put some kind of thrall on me and-"

"And you weren't strong enough to resist," Beowolf cut him off. "You knew all along too. Even if you didn't remember up here," he tapped his head, "it was still in here," he reached out and thumped Neal's chest, "the darkness. Your soul still carries the stain or you wouldn't be here now. Can't cleanse yourself in life of that you don't remember doing, now can you? Not even with that sad little sacrifice that amounted to nothing. Defeat the Wicked Witch? She's more family now than you ever were, Baelfire. All because you weren't strong enough to resist. You never were."

Neal/Baelfire looked down and found himself now gripping the dagger. "What...?"

"I don't deserve to be here," Beowolf snarled, "but you do. You think it's that easy to let go? Think again, boy,"

The more Neal tried to let go, the tighter his fingers curled around the hilt and he heard whispering in his head, the voices telling him to kill, that this was right, that this was the only way to protect his father and himself and bring peace to the land. He hadn't remembered _this_ , of course. He only had his father's memories to go, mad whispered insistences that it wasn't his fault, that he was brave and good and the

"No. No, no, no, no, no, no, what's happening? What's happening?" he cried, the thoughts in his head tumbling out like he was fifteen all over again.

"You just can't help yourself, can you?" Beowolf taunted and Neal whimpered, compelled to move forward.

"You have to believe me, I didn't want this!" Neal/Baelfire exclaimed in horror.

"And yet... once upon a time, _you did_."

Neal/Baelfire lunged forward, the blade burying deep in the other man's chest .

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry," Neal/Baelfire gasped as he stepped back only to shove the blade in again. "I can't make it stop!""

"It?" Beowolf scoffed. "As if you had no part in it."

"I don't! I didn't. I-I don't want this!" Neal/Baelfire shouted, horrified.

Beowolf laughed. "Look at you. So pitiful. Stuck in a Hell even worse than the one you once ruled, the one you thought you were saving others from. Trapped by your own guilt." he scoffed.

"And while we're pointing out how lame you are," Beowolf continued, "you didn't even follow through on your own. Sad, pathetic little boy had to use his daddy and dark magic to take care of the big bad coward."

"No!" Neal/Baelfire cried as the blade dug deep again and felt like it was eviscerating his own heart. He could _feel_ the darkness sprout from anger, hate, and fear, a malignant magical cancer that had been there for most of his life without him knowing, undermining every attempt at happiness, making him abandon his true love and his son over and over like his father had done to him.

"Oh, Bae, Bae, Bae. You should know better than to think you'd escaped the scourge of your lineage. It's all about patterns, _ill-boding patterns_ , predicting the future."

"What... what future?" Neal/Baelfire stammered.

"How should I know? You're the one who has to figure that out, aren't you? After all, I'm just in your head. I'm just a manifestation of your own guilty conscience. Speaking of..."

Neal/Baelfire whimpered as his hand began to move again and Beowolf smiled.

"I hope you didn't leave any unfinished business up on Mt. Olympus..."

"What?"

"...'cause you're never getting out of here."

* * *

"He's stuck," Kampe deduced after they had recaptured the criminals. "Trapped in one of those cells."

"Perhaps that was Zeus' plan all along," Geryon considered. "Send his Lord of The Underworld here to apprehend his predecessor's hired goons who would ensure he find himself trapped here forever. Now he cannot cause trouble on Mt. Olympus now.

"But... but how can he even be trapped?" Milah asked. "My son was a good man. He made some mistakes, but nothing so terrible he couldn't escape it. He made amends with those he left behind."

"Actually," Nimue interjected, "there is one thing. Your son did something terrible as a boy. He used the Dark One's dagger to order his father to murder a man. A morally questionable man who had betrayed his troops, but it was a cold-blooded act non-the-less, and one for which he felt no regret."

"That... that's not possible!" Milah exclaimed in shock.

"Many things are possible with enchanted weapons and dark magic," Nimue corrected, holding up Excalibur. "It was not the boy's true intention, but he was susceptible to the dagger's thrall, like his father. All loved-ones are. The Darkness seeks to destroy love and by doing so take deeper control over its host. But his father gave him a potion to forget what he had done to spare his conscience, but not remembering, he also could not cleanse that darkness in life... not until he was joined with his father and gained Rumplestiltskin's memories of it."

"The potion he sent. The sacrifice he made," Merlin considered, "should have been enough to purify his heart."

"But he wouldn't know that. This place wouldn't want him to know that," Kampe stated. "Zeus certainly would not have told him if he wanted Baelfire on his oath-sealed payroll to avoid him being resurrected by his counterfeit fairy grandmother in her quest to become a goddess and overthrow him."

"I have ceased trying to understand the complicated bramble of secrets, lies, and manipulations of the gods, fey, and those aspiring to join or destroy them," sighed Geryon. "All I know is that a man often meets his destiny on very road he takes to avoid it. Each one of us spent our lives running from our truths until they caught up with us. I served a cruel king. I thought by being a better one myself in another land I could absolve myself of the many souls that were lost, some trapped him, some utterly destroyed by weapons never meant to be used even by immortals. For my folly, my closest companions were brutally killed, my kingdom left in ruin, its people left starving, and even then when I could not accept, face accountability for what I had done, I became this... _thing_."

The others could not deny what the half-Titan king said. It was true. Each of them had not wanted to face the challenges before them in life. And by running from those things, either physically or with magic, they'd hurt those they loved the most both in life and in death.

"You are right, Geryon," Kampe nodded. "None of us is innocent. But few are. Even the gods are imperfect, some more terrible than any of us. We have done terrible things in moments of weakness. Fear and dark magic corrupt the soul and blacken the heart, lead beings to do things that are against their nature. It is not wrong to face punishment for those things, for we made the choices to wield it knowing the dangers, but it is wrong that we should rot here, unable to cleanse our souls as others may simply because the gods decree that we not be given that chance, that our actions, our deaths, our _imprisonment_ aids a greater purpose that serves them. It is wrong that Baelfire should be trapped here when he purified that darkness before his death."

Milah deduced sadly, "He lingered in The Underworld because he was my unfinished business. If not for me, my son might have moved on to some place truly better. He might have avoided Zeus' plotting."

She squared her shoulders. "Well, I won't let my son suffer for a crime put upon him by that bitch who birthed his father. I'm getting him out. And then we're taking all of these manipulative immortals down."

"You're sure?" Nimue asked, a hand on her arm. "You have not been keen on taking on the gods. To thwart Zeus' plan in such a way will not go unnoticed. And what you find beyond the door will not be pleasant."

Milah's eyes hardened. "Yes, I have a paralyzing fear of the place. But I would face a thousand Hells to save my son. I failed him in life. I will not fail him in death."

* * *

Beowolf grunted as the blade went in once more.

Neal/Baelfire was sobbing.

"I-I know. I know. Hurts you more than it does me," the faux dead warrior crooned.

"Please, please, forgive me!" Neal/Baelfire wept. "I didn't think I had a choice. Everyone would have turned on me and my father and he would have done terrible things!"

"He still did terrible things," Beowolf reminded. "The only difference is that you became complicit in those things. You took away his free will, offered him to the voices, to the magic, the _Darkness_ with no fight. And all it takes is a single moment for that war to be lost."

"No!" Neal/Baelfire cried. "I'm sorry. I didn't know what would happen. I-I didn't understand!"

"But you felt the darkness when you held the dagger, when thoughts of murder filled your heart," Beowolf argued as again he was stabbed. "And the Darkness answered your desire and you didn't even try to fight-"

"No!" a voice yelled and Neal turned, panting, looking toward his mother.

"Mom? W-what are you doing here?"

"I'm your rescue party of one. You don't belong here," Milah stated.

"But look. Look what I've done!" Neal cried.

"Baelfire, this man isn't real," Milah reminded him. "He's just a part of your Hell."

"But-"

"No," Milah cut him off. "You were... you were just trying to save innocent people and you were seduced by powerful dark magic. This isn't your fault. The plot was probably your grandmother's. But that it worked. That's mine. I am to blame for all of this. Ever since... ever since your father returned from the war I tried to stoke your anger at the situation you were in and turn it against your father in the hopes of using you against him. But... but I just made things worse. I pushed you away. And then I left you with thoughts of terrible things done to me in a land on the verge of another war even worse than before. I left you to watch your friends go off to die and your father alone to save you from being killed like them instead of taking you away with me.

"I wanted to be free of that life," Milah concluded with regret, "and so I left you. And now look at us. Stuck in this prison while worlds are dying, while the woman you sacrificed selflessly for is unknowingly walking a death more contrived and pointless than that sham of a 'final battle' your grandmother designed, that Zeus thwarted at Emma's very conception with her twin who could take her place, a loophole to prevent her death. She was a savior by following her script. Now she will be a sacrifice to make way for a new one if we don't get out of here."

"Emma..." Neal blinked as if being lifted out of a trance and he wasn't a boy anymore, his hands now free of blood and that damned dagger. "I have to save Emma!"

Neal turned toward the door that had no place being in the middle of the forest, moving forward, but alone. "Mom?" He turned back and Beowolf was gone, replaced again by his father, but younger and human and an even younger version of himself fiddling with his old silver claps and smiling a chirpily, "Mama! You're back!"

"Yes," she smiled at him ."We can be a happy family. I've missed you so much."

"Mother!" Neal called again. "Mom? Mom. Mom! Come on. You pulled me out of my guilt, there's no time to get stuck in yours. You know this won't turn out well! Come on. Come on!"

"Please, don't abandon me. Not again!" the little boy cried.

"No... No. Baelfire," she hugged the boy. "I would never abandon you again. Shh. My sweet boy!"

"He's not real. Mom!" Neal shouted, physically grabbing her and pulling her toward the door. "Please. Mom. Mom. Mom: He's not your son!" he tried to argue with her as she fought, even as his heart broke for her reaching out to that little boy who wasn't him, but could have been.

* * *

"I'm sorry I fell apart there," Milah sighed as Neal sat down beside her on a mossy fallen tree.

"Well, it was never real, was it?"

"Baelfire, I am so sorry," Milah insisted.

"My life was forfeit to set my father on a path," Neal considered. "Was putting Emma in my path part of that too? It feels like the whole thing's been a sham, Mom. Long con. And I fell for it."

"I can't speak for what manner of destiny brought you and Emma together. But you can't blame yourself. This is all Zeus' doing. And He should be punished for it."

"Oh, I plan on that," Neal growled. "I mean, how can I trust anything, anyone, now that I know these damn gods might be behind it all? How can I know what was real in my life? And what if there are other things I've forgotten that my father wasn't there to remember for me?"

"I don't know, but you can trust me."

"Can I, Mom? Cause I don't know," Neal shot back. "There's a lot wrong with Papa, but at least he never pretended he loved me more than he power and the freedom it gave him." He grimaced, amending, "At least not after that day, not after he couldn't fight it anymore. So how do I know you weren't working for Hades or Zeus like James and Gaston, that you weren't sent here to wait for me and help keep me from warning Emma?"

"I made mistakes," Milah conceded. "I chose freedom and the power I thought that other life gave me. But it was all lies filled with shame and regret. I _do_ love you, Baelfire. Would I have gone through that door to find you if I didn't? Doesn't that count for anything?"

"I don't know," Neal sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "I don't even know who I am anymore. All I know is that I refuse to be caught in the middle of some stupid power play between the gods any longer. I am tired of being a pawn."

"We all are," Milah nodded. "And I don't expect your forgiveness, son. I never did. But don't doubt who you are based on that one moment in your life and the path you could have taken if your father hadn't taken it from you. Your life was tragic and painful, but you lived it more selflessly than most even carrying a darkness you didn't know was there. Whoever or whatever you _could_ have become when it found its way into you and twisted you into someone who would deepen its hold on your father, you didn't. And it's guilt that trapped you in that place, not darkness, not when you fought so hard to free yourself and save your true love and your son. When you fought for your family and gave up your life, your happiness for their safety, that darkness was gone. Guilt trapped you in the Afterlife even before Hades and Zeus meddled. And oaths or not, only you can free yourself from _that_."

She shook her head and insisted, "You faced the bad thing that you did. You can't change that or the choices others made because of it. But you can keep bad people from tempting others into embracing the worst part of themselves that we all carry inside of us, from letting it consume them and continue this cycle our world has been trapped in for generations. Because _that_ is the _best_ part of yourself, Baelfire. That's the part of _you_ that you have always listened to."

"I still killed a man," Neal argued.

"I've killed many men," Milah sadly told him, "and women. And many were good, innocent people that I killed for far less well-intended reasons than what you did even following the desires of an ancient evil. Sometimes just... to watch them die and laugh at them for staying imprisoned in the life I had escaped. I did all of that without any threat to those I cared for or a dark enchanted weapon drawing on my weaknesses."

"Which doesn't entirely excuse it," Neal sighed, "though maybe... on some subconscious level explains why I wanted so badly to destroy magic when I was a kid, when I got to that other world."

"Perhaps," Milah agreed. "And you will carry that guilt to whatever comes after we kick Zeus' ass across the Styx. But don't let it imprison you. Even if you didn't know what you did for most of your life, even if that darkness undermined your choices, you still tried to make the right ones. You weren't your father, Baelfire. And if anything you should be given time served in Neverland and the horrors you suffered there that no child, no matter what they did, should have to endure."

Milah gave his shoulder a squeeze as she stood up. "You're a good man, whatever age you are, whatever name you call yourself. Don't let the gods and their cruel manipulations make you doubt how brave and true you are, son. Don't let them turn you into something you don't want to be because you gave into a weakness long ago as a boy who didn't understand the world or the ancient evil he was up against, who was simply afraid of losing the only family he had left and desperate for the power to keep his father safe."

Neal didn't respond to that, but he did watch his mother walk over to the campfire where the others had gathered. He knew that she was right. He knew he'd been manipulated. He'd been enticed in some sort of _Lord of the Rings_ type bullshit with the dagger. But he'd still _let_ himself _not_ fight.

He felt ill over it all over again.

It was a not-really memory that he'd been able to avoid dealing with all this time because it wasn't his actual memory, more like a movie he was watching with actors playing him and his father. But now... now his soul _ached_ with it.

Looking up at the eerie green sky devoid of stars, Neal recalled something Emma had shared during their recent and all-too-brief time together, an unburdening of her sins, the worst that she had left a woman to bleed to death in a street to escape arrest. She could blame her sister for being so reckless and callous, she'd said, but she couldn't _not_ blame herself for being so desperate for answers and terrified of going back to jail that she let that darkness win, let herself run and never turn herself in for the initial crime, let alone the considerably more sever punishment she could have faced for admitting to leaving a fatally wounded person to bleed to death without calling for an ambulance... even if that woman had told her to leave, believing her injury too severe anyway... which Emma said she'd told herself over and over for years to live with what she'd done, but she could never really know, and it would always haunt her.

Now in death he had his own ghost, his own bloodied hands when he'd always thought in that life that he was the good one in a family of killers. Now taking that key and using it on the Vault didn't seem so odd a thing to have done. There was already some darkness from _The Darkness_ in him, a darkness in his heart, a blemish on his soul for using the dagger to make the Dark One kill. So, of course, it would call to him, it would want him to be its sacrifice. And maybe he had deserved that.

Maybe he deserved all of the suffering in his life and after it was done.

But there were many more who didn't deserve it, who'd done nothing at all and would be wiped out of existence so that Zeus could simply start over with new worlds, new innocent people to turn into monsters.

Neal didn't know if his heart was purified or if he deserved forgiveness for killing Beowolf and making his father's fight so much harder than it already was. He doubted he would ever forgive himself either way. But his mother was right that now wasn't the time to wallow in guilt, for any of them to dwell on their crimes and what punishment they merited.

Standing up, he took a deep breath and then went to join the others. "So, we need a plan to get Prometheus."

* * *

AN: I disliked "Ill-Boding Patterns" immensely, from the garbage that having Baelfire go full Frodo like the dagger was the One Ring to having that juxtaposed with this Gideon bullshit _and_ Emma basically proposing to herself with Hook and it being framed like she's too blame in her absurd over-excitement for him continuing to lie to her. What toxic garbage! But at least the Blue Fairy continues to seem super shady.

"A man often meets his destiny on the very road he takes to avoid it." - HR to Barry on a fixed future, _The Flash_


End file.
